


Child Within

by JCapasso



Series: Child Within [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Chloe bashing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 29,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCapasso/pseuds/JCapasso
Summary: Chloe goes through with poisoning the wine and the ritual to banish Lucifer to hell, but it has surprising and somewhat disastrous results.
Series: Child Within [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757560
Comments: 119
Kudos: 205





	1. Chapter 1

Chloe’s hand was shaking as she poured the sedative into Lucifer’s wine and when the music came on loudly, she almost spilled it but managed to avoid that barely. She swirled the wine in the glass quickly to make sure there were no traces and had just set it back down when Lucifer returned. The happy smile on his face as he toasted them sent a pang of guilt through her, but she pushed it away. This was necessary. To save the world. To protect them all. At the end of the toast, they both took long drinks of the wine and Lucifer managed to set his glass down before he doubled over. As he did, he shot her a look of betrayal that nearly ripped her heart out. “Why…” he managed to get out in a heartbroken voice before he slumped over unconscious. 

Chloe took a few deep breaths to steady herself before texting Father Kinley who was waiting downstairs. He came up a few moments later and drew a bunch of symbols on the floor around Lucifer while Chloe moved the furniture to make room. When he began the ritual, Lucifer started twisting and screaming like he was in agony, but didn’t regain consciousness. Chloe had tears streaming down her face, but kept reminding herself that this was for the best. Finally there was a bright flash of light and when it cleared Lucifer was gone, but there was a small child in his place. The child couldn’t have been more than three years old and Chloe gasped. 

When Kinley took out a large ritual blade, Chloe reacted instinctively and raised her gun to point at him. “What are you doing?” she asked. 

That seemed to be the cue for the child to wake up and he looked at the two people leaning over him and started crying, crab-walking back until he hit the corner. “He’s still the devil, Detective Decker. The only way to rid us of the evil forever is to destroy him completely.”

“He’s a child,” Chloe said, gaze flickering between the priest and the terrified little boy. 

“Mommy! Daddy!” the child called fearfully. 

“There. You see? It’s all a trick. Everyone knows that the angels don’t have a mother,” Kinley said raising his knife again and rushing towards the boy. Chloe shot three times and Kinley fell, blood staining the floor. 

Chloe moved over to the little boy and said gently. “It’s okay. No one is going to hurt you.” 

He just pressed himself even tighter into the corner and cried, “Amen’diel!” If his parents didn’t come, his oldest brother would. His parents were very busy, so Amenadiel was the one who took care of them when they couldn’t. 

Before Chloe could touch him, a very confused Amenadiel appeared in the room. “Stay away from him,” he snapped as he instantly took in the room. The dead priest, the ritual circles, and the terrified angel child. It didn’t dawn on him that it was Lucifer until the child looked up and ran towards him and Amenadiel instinctively picked him up. “Lucifer?!” 

“Why be formal?” the toddler asked, feeling much better now that his brother had him. 

“Sorry. Samael,” Amenadiel corrected. It seemed that in addition to reverting to his childlike appearance he had also lost his memories. He didn’t remember that he had taken on his title as his name millennia ago. Amenadiel glared at Chloe, having every intention of finding out what was going on here, but needing to get Samael settled first. “Samael, I need to have a talk with this lady and find out what happened here. We’ll be right out there where you can see us if you want, but I’ll show you something very neat first okay?” 

Samael started feeling afraid again at the very idea that his brother would leave his side in this strange place, but if he could still see him then he was sure that he would be okay so he nodded. Amenadiel carried him over to something and sat him down. It was very comfortable. It felt like the clouds looked and then he picked up a little box and pushed a button. Samael gasped in surprise as a big box on the wall started showing moving pictures. They changed a few times before they stopped and he could read a little box in the corner that said Cartoon Network. 

“Now, you just watch this for a little while and I’ll be right outside, okay?” Amenadiel said gently. Samael nodded, completely entranced. That done, Amenadiel grabbed the shell-shocked detective’s arm and all but dragged her out to the balcony. “What is going on here?” 

Somehow it hadn’t dawned on Chloe that Lucifer’s brother would be an angel. She should have talked to him before going along with Kinley’s plan. He definitely didn’t seem happy right now. “I…it was…he…”

“Let me tell you what I know,” Amenadiel said dangerously. “I know that no priest could get close enough to my brother to get him into that circle without help. Help from someone that Lucifer trusted. Now you are going to tell me /exactly/ what happened, or I will force it out of you the hard way. Understood?” 

Chloe gulped nervously and nodded. She started from seeing Lucifer’s devil face and fleeing to Rome, meeting Father Kinley, the stories, the evidence, the plan. She told him how she drugged Lucifer’s drink and then called the priest when he was unconscious. She told him everything she could remember about the ritual and how when she realized that he’d been turned into a little boy, she stopped the priest from killing him. 

“Let me get this straight,” Amenadiel growled. “My brother, who already had very fragile trust in /anyone/ chose to place his trust in you. For the first time since before he was cast out of heaven, he had opened himself up to love and fell in love with you. You then used those feelings, that hope, against him to lure him into a trap to kill him?!” 

“He…he’s the devil…he…he’s evil…”

“Bullshit,” Amenadiel snapped, glad that this balcony had been designed to muffle sound between here and the inside. “I used to think the same, but that was before I understood him. All he ever wanted was free will, Chloe. The ability to make his own choices and be his own person. He valued it so much that he gave that gift to humanity which is what got him cast out. I never understood it until I got to spend more time with humanity and see how precious it was. What’s your excuse?” 

“I…he…he’s the devil,” she said weakly, knowing that didn’t hold much water anymore. “The…the stories…”

“Written by humans. Designed to give them a scapegoat. Someone to blame for all the evil that /their/ choices led to,” he said disgustedly. 

“I…I didn’t know…I…I’m sorry,” Chloe said, losing her hold on her tears that burst forth. 

“You should be sorry,” Amenadiel snapped. “And you better hope that I can fix this, though I doubt that Lucifer will ever want anything to do with you again either way.” Chloe nodded tearfully. “You will stay here while I try to fix this. My brother deserves the chance to look you in the eye after what you’ve done to him, but you will leave that child in there alone. Understood?” Chloe nodded again, so Amenadiel pulled out his phone. “Maze I need you at Lucifer’s immediately. It’s an emergency.” He had to leave for a while and wasn’t about to leave his baby brother in Chloe’s care. Not after this. 

Amenadiel went back inside and went to sit next to Samael who snuggled up to his side, but didn’t take his enraptured eyes off the television and Amenadiel chuckled sadly. Maze got there ten minutes later, obviously not wasting any time. “What’s the emergen…” she stopped short at the scene. “What happened here?”

Amenadiel gave her the short version and she started advancing on Chloe. “Maze, stop.” He could feel his baby brother pressing tighter against him and gripping his hand and knew that despite not seeming like it, he was hearing everything that was going on around him. 

“You can’t possibly be defending her,” Maze turned to him and snarled. 

Chloe was terrified but resisted the urge to run. She knew that she wouldn’t get far and it would only make it worse for her in the end. “Of course not,” Amenadiel snapped. “But her fate is in Lucifer’s hands when and if I can get him back.” 

Maze growled but nodded. “Then why am I here? You need me to get rid of the body?” she asked gesturing to Kinley. 

“No. I need to take a trip,” Amenadiel pointed down, not wanting to get in too much detail with the little ears listening. “I need you to guard him while I’m gone.”

“You want me to babysit?” Maze asked incredulously. 

“Not as such. I want you to keep him safe. He seems perfectly happy to watch the television and I shouldn’t be long,” Amenadiel told her. 

“Fine. I guess I can do that,” Maze said disgruntled. 

“Thank you, Mazikeen,” Amenadiel said before turning to Samael who abandoned the television to look at his brother worriedly. “I’ll be back soon, okay little brother? No one and nothing will hurt you with Maze here. She’s the best bodyguard in all the worlds. 

“You come back?” Samael asked scared. This was a strange place with strange people and he didn’t like it. 

“I promise, I will come back, Samael,” he said gravely. 

“’kay,” he got from the toddler. Once Amenadiel was gone, he watched the women warily for a minute before turning back to the television, glancing over every few minutes.


	2. Chapter 2

Once Samael quit watching them suspiciously, Maze pulled out her knife and started twirling it in her fingers as she sat next to Chloe at the bar. “I want you to know Decker, that the only reason you’re still alive is because I can’t wait to see what Lucifer does to you for this.” 

“I know I screwed up, Maze, but…”

“No! No buts. This wasn’t a screwup. This was a betrayal. Pure and simple.”

“Like you’ve never betrayed him?” Chloe scoffed. 

“Oh I have, sure. And I’ve paid for it more often than not. But never have I dangled everything he’s ever dreamed of in front of him and used that to hurt him. That’s low even for demons. The kind of torture reserved for the worst of the worst in hell.” Chloe didn’t know what to say to that so just kept her mouth shut, hoping Amenadiel would get back sooner rather than later. She wasn’t sure if she hoped that he found a way to fix this or not though. 

Amenadiel arrived in Hell and headed straight for the central city, knowing that if the rest of his brother was here that’s where he would be. He didn’t make it all the way though before Lucifer suddenly stepped in front of him. At least he was lucid enough to have sensed his presence. “Luci! I’m so glad to see you.”

“Why are you here, brother?” Lucifer asked with a sneer. 

“I’ve come to take you home. To fix this. I don’t know if you’ve realized what’s happened…”

“What I realize is that I chose to place my trust in yet another person who betrayed me, but I don’t care anymore.” 

“Luci the reason you don’t care is because…”

“I don’t want to hear it. I feel freer than I ever have. No more pesky conscience holding me back. No more weaknesses. No more temptation to show mercy to the wicked.”

“Because you’ve been split in two, Luci. Samael, a little angel, is still up on earth, scared and confused. You have to come back so that we can fix this.”

“Don’t you see, brother? This is the best way for all of us. I can be here doing my job and punishing the damned without having to worry about emotions making me vulnerable and he doesn’t have to be tainted by my darkness. Win win.”

“This isn’t the way Luci. You can’t just run away from your feelings…”

“It seems to me that I can,” Lucifer laughed coldly. “Go handle the little angel and leave me alone, brother.”

“I can’t let you do this,” Amenadiel said firmly. 

“You can’t can you? You think you can take me from here by force?” Lucifer sneered. “Even if you could take me, you couldn’t take on the legions of demons I command here.” Lucifer stepped close and got right in his brother’s face. “This is /my/ domain, Amenadiel, and you’re not welcome here. You have one chance to leave before I make you. And if you ever return, it will be your death.” 

Amenadiel set his jaw and closed his eyes against the tears welling up there. Lucifer was right. There was nothing he could do. He really had lost his brother forever. “Goodbye, Luci,” he whispered heartbrokenly before flying away. He only hoped that Lucifer would change his mind eventually. 

He returned back in the penthouse ten minutes after he left, and the moment he appeared, Samael was off the couch and running towards him again and Amenadiel scooped him up, hugging him tightly. This was all he had left of his brother now. “Where is he?” Maze asked. 

Amenadiel sighed sadly before turning a glare to Chloe. “He’s decided it’s better this way. He doesn’t have to deal with the emotions that tear him apart and can just be the ruthless king of hell.” 

“So…he…he really is evil now?” Chloe asked fearfully. If she truly had turned him evil and betrayed him, what did that mean for her? Was he going to come after her?

Amenadiel scoffed and Maze barely resisted the urge to kill her. “He doesn’t have the capacity for true evil, Chloe. He is the punisher of evil. What you’ve done is remove any capacity for mercy. Any sense of remorse. He will never harm an innocent, but the guilty will suffer more than ever. I’m sure one day you will find out for yourself,” Amenadiel told her before turning to Maze. “Since I’m back now, would you mind taking care of that body?” 

“On one condition,” Maze told him. 

“What’s that?” 

“When I’m done, you take me back to Hell. If he’s back on the throne, my place is at his side. There’s nothing left for me here,” she said with a disgusted look at Chloe. 

“Very well. If that’s what you wish, I will drop you at the gates. I have been forbidden to enter Hell again, myself.” 

“Good enough,” Maze said, heading downstairs and grabbing a handful of rags from the bags of her bike. She had plans for this and rags from home would come in more handy than ones from here. She got back up a minute later and threw some to Chloe. “The least you can do is help clean up the blood.” 

Chloe nodded and was too afraid not to obey. By the time she was done, there were spots of blood all over her that had dripped from the rags. She washed her hands and arms off in the sink, but couldn’t do anything about her clothes. At least she wasn’t soaked in it though and her car was parked in the garage so she wasn’t likely to be seen on the way home. “Can I leave now?” she asked after Maze left with the body and rags in a large garbage bag. When Amenadiel nodded, she wasted no time in doing so. 

When Maze got back, Amenadiel asked, “What did you do with the body?” 

Maze smirked. “Put it in Chloe’s trash.” 

Amenadiel blinked for a moment before laughing. “A fitting punishment,” he said with a grin. Between the body in the trash, the bloody rags from her house, the blood and gunshot residue on her clothes, and the bullets in him coming from her registered weapon, she would soon be going to jail for the murder of the priest. That or a mental hospital if she tried to explain what actually happened. Either way, she deserved it. “Are you ready to go?” he asked her and she nodded. Amenadiel put Samael down, and told him. “I need to go for one more minute, but I’ll be right back okay?” 

“One minute?” Samael asked nervously. 

“Yes, Samael. I just have to drop Maze off and come right back.” When Samael nodded, Amenadiel picked up the demon and flew away and he was back in less than a minute. 

“We go home now?” Samael asked, lifting his arms to be picked back up when Amenadiel got back. 

Amenadiel sighed sadly. “No, Samael. We can’t go home yet.”

“Why?” 

“It’s a very complicated story. But for now we can go visit a friend of mine, how’s that?” 

Samael tilted his head curiously before nodding. “Then we go home?” 

“We’ll talk about that later,” Amenadiel promised him. He needed some advice on how to do this. How to explain to a three year old why he had been banished for things that he couldn’t even remember doing, how his siblings were all so old now. He was just glad that he had already been grown when Samael was born, but there were a lot that were closer in age to him and others that hadn’t even been born yet when he was last this age. If he even got a chance to meet them. There was no guarantee his father would let him come home. Even like this. He stepped out to the balcony and tucked the toddler into his shirt as extra protection, wrapping his arms around him and flying towards Linda’s. 

He landed outside and rang the bell and the door was answered relatively quickly by a frazzled looking Linda. “I’m glad you’re here. I was going to come find you soon…what…” Linda trailed off as she saw a bundle in his shirt. 

“It’s a long story,” Amenadiel started to say as Samael popped his head out and looked at the new person curiously. 

Linda’s eyes went wide and she nodded and motioned Amenadiel in. “I think this takes precedence over my news.”

“This is complicated, so we may as well get yours out of the way first,” Amenadiel said. 

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out. 

Amenadiel plopped down into the chair that was behind him, jostling Samael as he did, and just gaped at her. “Amen’diel. What pegant mean?” 

Linda chuckled and turned her attention to the child that looked just like Lucifer. She wondered if it was his son. She would try to keep them both occupied until Amenadiel recovered enough to respond to either of them. “Hi, I’m Linda. What’s your name?”

“Samael,” he said with a bright smile. “You Amen’diel’s friend?” 

Linda sucked in a sharp breath at his name as she nodded. Lucifer would never name his child Samael, and he would never tell anyone else that name for the mother to give it to him either. She was beginning to form a suspicion, as ludicrous as it may be. “Amenadiel, what’s going on?”


	3. Chapter 3

Amenadiel opened his mouth to answer her but was interrupted by a yawn from Samael. He realized that he would probably need to go into much more detail this time than he had with Maze and it was probably best for the toddler not to hear it. He’d been able to explain vaguely enough to keep Samael from realizing they were talking about him before, but he doubted he would be able to get away with that with Linda. “Do you have somewhere we can put him down for a nap before we get into that?” 

Linda nodded. “Follow me,” she told him as she got up. She started to go up the stairs but the decided the putting a toddler upstairs when they were likely to be distracted probably wasn’t a good idea, so she detoured to the downstairs guest room. Before Amenadiel could put him down on the bed, Linda pulled the fluffy comforter, fleece underblanket, and the pillows off the bed and started making a nest on the floor. “I don’t want him to roll out of bed and hurt himself since there aren’t any rails or anything,” she explained at Amenadiel’s confused look. 

Amenadiel nodded in understanding as Samael muttered, “Not seepy.” 

Amenadiel chuckled. “I know, Samael, but you need to take a nap anyway.”

“Then go home?” he asked hopefully. 

“We’ll discuss that when you wake up,” Amenadiel told him, laying him down in the nest and pulling the fleece blanket over top of him. Despite his protests, he was asleep almost immediately and Linda and Amenadiel went back to the living room and sat down. Part of him wanted to talk more about her being pregnant, but he knew that they could do that in front of Samael. This needed to be taken care of while he was sleeping. He gave her the short version of Chloe’s betrayal and the ritual and explained the results. 

Unlike Maze, who just cared about the what, Linda wanted to know the whys and hows. “Okay, but how did it split him in two like that? And why this age?” 

“From what I saw of the ritual, it was designed to send ‘the devil’ back to Hell, but not all of him was the devil. I suspect that he returned to this age because it is roughly when his rebellious streak began.” 

“As it does for all children,” Linda said knowingly. 

“Yes. His was a bit more pronounced than most though and he didn’t exactly grow out of it,” Amenadiel told her. 

“But the other part of him refuses to return and remerge,” Linda said worriedly, but not really surprised. He’d been trying to run away from his feelings for as long as she’d known him. When she finally got him past that, they were used to betray him and he was given the ability to sever them completely. She completely understood where he was coming from and couldn’t honestly blame him. That didn’t mean it was healthy though. 

“Yes,” Amenadiel nodded. 

“So the other part of him…is he not an angel anymore, or how does that work?” 

“No he’s still an angel. His species can’t be changed. Only his personality has,” Amenadiel told her. 

“And little Samael has no memory past the last time he was this age?” Linda asked concerned. 

“He doesn’t seem to, no. That’s why I came here. How do I explain all of this to him…” Amenadiel cut off and sighed. “I am being summoned. Would you mind staying with him until I return?” 

Linda nodded. “Of course.” She wasn’t exactly comfortable with having an angel baby thrust on her like this, but she couldn’t expect Amenadiel to ignore a summons from God. She would apparently need the practice anyway. Once Amenadiel disappeared, she went into the kitchen to find something she could make for a snack for a toddler once he woke up. At least she had a little time now to turn Amenadiel’s question over in her mind and come up with some kind of advice to give him. 

Amenadiel flew through the gates and into the throne room to find his father and many of his brothers and sisters gathered there. He landed and knelt. “It has come to my attention that there is an issue that has arisen with your brother on Earth. Tell me what happened,” his father asked. 

Amenadiel nodded and began the story for what felt like the tenth time now before finishing with, “Samael keeps asking to come home…”

“No,” God said firmly. “He rebelled once and he will do it again. Nothing has changed.”

“You expect him to be raised on Earth? Aren’t you concerned with him revealing divinity to humans?” Michael asked curiously, concerned for his twin brother. Not that they were actually twins anymore apparently since Samael was so young again. 

“He has already revealed it to several. Let one of them raise him. Perhaps the one who caused this problem in the first place. Or take him to Hell and let the other portion of himself do it,” God said unconcerned. 

“You would send a child to Hell?” Gabriel asked with wide-eyes.

“It is where he would end up anyway when history repeats itself,” God told him before turning back to Amenadiel. “You will make the arrangements and return here permanently.”

“I can’t do that, father,” Amenadiel said with a wince. He couldn’t just abandon his brother. Not at this age. Not when he was the only sense of normalcy the toddler had. Not to mention his own unborn child. 

“What did you just say?” God said coldly as half the room gasped and a few of them gave him sympathetic looks. 

“I cannot abandon my brother when he is so helpless. I also just learned that I have a child of my own on the way.” 

“You may go get your child and bring him here when he is born. I have already told you what to do about your brother,” God said dangerously. 

Amenadiel took a deep breath, setting his decision in stone before he stood and said a clear and resounding, “No.” 

God narrowed his eyes at his eldest son. “Then you will share in your brother’s banishment as will your son. If any of you cause problems on Earth then you will be thrown into Hell with the other portion of your brother. Now, get out of my sight.” Amenadiel gave a curt nod and turned to walk out at a brisk pace. “ALL OF YOU!” God yelled and he was soon followed by the throng. 

Once he was outside the palace he took flight, heading for the gates and soon found Michael and Gabriel in the air next to him. “That took guts,” Gabriel said with awed respect. 

“No kidding,” Michael said. “How is Samael?” 

“Scared and confused. I don’t know how to explain any of this to him,” Amenadiel said sadly as they approached the gates. 

“Yeah, that won’t be easy. If you need anything, feel free to call on either of us. We can try and sneak down from time to time, and I’m sure Rae-Rae would too,” Gabriel assured him. There weren’t many of them that didn’t hate Lucifer these days, but there were still a few. 

“Thank you brothers. I will let you know,” Amenadiel said pulling them both into a hug before he left heaven for the last time. 

Chloe returned home to find squad cars surrounding her building and her concern quickly wiped away all thoughts of her bloody clothes as she got out of the car and went to see what was going on, flashing her badge to get her through. One of the detectives on the scene rushed over to stop her, just as she caught sight of Kinley’s body being pulled out of her trash and she gasped. Of course Maze would do this. And she couldn’t even say that she didn’t deserve it. “You can see how this looks, Decker, so I have to take you in. We can do this without the cuffs, but I’ll need you to hand over your badge and gun,” the detective told her.

Chloe didn’t even argue just did as she was asked and followed to sit in the back of the car as her mind whirled, trying to figure out how to get out of this mess. She couldn’t claim it was a good shoot for the simple reason that his body was dumped in her trash can and she hadn’t called anyone to the scene. Her bloody clothes combined with the fact that ballistics would prove that it was her weapon with only her prints on it, and the gunshot residue on her clothes…she wasn’t getting out of this. The disappearance of Lucifer meant that she could try to implicate him as well for a lesser sentence, but she wasn’t about to go there. She had already betrayed him enough and she wasn’t going to risk causing any trouble for the little boy that was left in his place. 

In the end there was only one thing she could do. Confess and hope for a decent plea bargain. She also added a confession to killing Lucifer, which was also technically true, just so that he wouldn’t end up implicated. She lied though when she said that she dumped his body in the river and was coming back to do the same to the priest. She told them that she and the priest had worked together to kill Lucifer, but when the priest tried to go after an innocent as well, she took him down. She framed it as bitterness over Lucifer killing her ex-fiancee, knowing that saying that he was the devil would have her thrown somewhere even worse than jail and may even cause problems if the people who had seen as much suspicious stuff as she had actually started to believe it. She was making amends the only way she knew how, despite knowing that it would never be enough.


	4. Chapter 4

When Amenadiel got back from Heaven about two hours after he left, he found Linda and Samael in the kitchen and Samael was eating cut up bites of apples. “Amen’diel! You back! You not say leaving,” he pouted. 

Linda chuckled and told Amenadiel, “He was rather upset when he woke up and you were gone. It took a me bit to get him calmed down enough to eat something.”

“Thank you, Linda,” he said gratefully before telling Samael, “I am sorry. I had something very important to do. I hoped that I would return before you woke up.”

“What happened?” Linda asked, noticing how shaken up Amenadiel looked. 

Amenadiel ruffled Samael’s hair before pulling Linda to the corner of the kitchen out of earshot. “I’ve been banished along with Samael.”

Linda gasped and covered her mouth. “What? Why?” 

“Because I refused to abandon Samael and take our child from you to be raised in heaven after his birth,” Amenadiel told her. 

“But…but…he wanted…” Linda’s eyes filled with tears that she was trying to keep from spilling over. 

They were interrupted by the doorbell and Linda went to answer it, leaving Amenadiel to take care of Samael. She opened the door to find a teary Ella standing on the stoop. “Come in,” Linda said worriedly. “What’s wrong?” 

“Something’s happened. I…I wanted you to hear it from me in-instead of the…the news,” she sniffled. 

“What is it?” she asked. 

“Chloe…she’s been arrested for…for killing a priest and…and killing Lucifer too,” Ella said wiping her tears away as fast as they came. 

Before Linda could say anything to that she heard a child scream. “No! Want home! Want Daddy!” Samael came barreling into the room towards the door, but Linda was quick enough to grab him before he got too far and Ella gasped in shock, tears coming faster and harder, especially as the child kept kicking and screaming. “Go home! Want Daddy!” 

Amenadiel retrieved him from Linda with an apologetic look and said sternly. “Stop that tantrum this instant, Samael.” 

The child stopped kicking and screaming, but kept crying and muttering the same words. “L-Lu-Luc…he…he had a son…” Ella gasped out, heartbroken at the sight as Amenadiel carried the upset toddler from the room to give the women some privacy. 

They hadn’t actually decided what to say about Samael, but Lucifer’s son was probably the easiest and best thing. “He called Amenadiel for help when everything happened,” Linda said, not confirming or denying her statement. 

“So he was there…” Ella said sadly. “Wait is he the innocent that Chloe shot the priest to protect?” 

“I wouldn’t know. He doesn’t really understand much of what happened and is communicating even less. That’s why Amenadiel brought him here. To see if I could help explain, but we haven’t really had time to sit down,” Linda told her.

“Okay, I’ll go then and let you get to it. I just wanted to make sure you knew. You’re taking it pretty well,” Ella said as she got up. 

Linda pulled her into a hug as she said, “I think it just hasn’t really hit yet, you know. We’ve been so worried about Samael and figuring that out.” 

“Yeah. Makes sense,” Ella sniffled. “Well if you need to talk or anything when it does hit you…”

“I’ll call,” Linda promised. 

“Oh hey, do you know how to contact Maze? I tried her phone but it’s not working.”

“Yeah, she’s gone too,” Linda told her and when Ella gasped and looked ready to burst into sobs again, she rushed to explain. “Not dead gone. She just left. You know how she is with emotional stuff and with both Chloe and Lucifer…” 

“Yeah. I get it. I wish I could run away from it all too,” Ella said sadly, hugging Linda one more time before she left. 

Linda went looking for Amenadiel and Samael and would have laughed at what she found if it wasn’t so sad. Samael was sitting on the bed giving Amenadiel a glare that reminded her so much of Lucifer it hurt. “What did you tell him?” she asked curiously, wondering what caused that little tantrum. 

“When he finished eating, he asked to go home. I told him that we couldn’t, but that we would find a new home here,” Amenadiel told her. 

“Right. Okay, come with me Samael. I think we all need to have a little talk. You’ve been very patient waiting for explanations. Thank you,” she started it off with praise, reaching a hand toward him and knew she did the right thing when the toddler took it and followed her to the living room, Amenadiel following behind. Once they were all sitting on the couch with Samael between them, Linda looked at Amenadiel and told him, “I’ll explain what’s happened to him, but you’ll have to do the rest.” 

When Amenadiel nodded, Linda turned to Samael and said, “Okay, this is going to be hard for you to understand and maybe even believe, but I promise it’s the truth.” She waited until she got a nod from the boy before continuing. “A very long time has passed since you last remember. Something happened to you and made you turn from a grown up back into a little boy,” she explained. 

“How?” Samael asked confused. 

“It’s difficult to explain, but what you need to know is that a lot has changed since you last remember,” Linda told him. 

“No believe you,” he said suspiciously looking between her and Amenadiel. He didn’t know why they would make this up, but it sounded stupid. 

“Maybe I can prove it to you,” Amenadiel said looking to Linda for approval and when she nodded, he said, “Michael. Can you come down for a moment.” He made sure to pray aloud so that Samael would know who he was praying to. 

“What is it…oh wow. We did used to be tiny,” Michael said distracted by his mini twin. He moved over and crouched in front of him. “Hey Sammy.”

“You no Mikey. Mikey little like me,” Samael said defiantly. 

“I was back when you were little the first time,” Michael said gently. “But it’s been a long time since then. Look. Remember this?” Michael said rolling up his sleeve and showing the long scar on his arm. 

Samael looked at it for a minute and then reached out his little hand to touch it and make sure it was real before his defiance turned to confusion and fear. “Wanna go home,” he said again. His Daddy would make it better. He always did. 

“Oh, Sammy,” Michael said sadly, pulling the toddler into a hug. “I wish you could, little one.” 

“Why no home?” Samael asked in a broken voice. 

“Because grown up you and Dad got in a big fight and he won’t let you come home. He’s being mean, but he won’t listen to anyone.” 

“Mommy den,” Samael said. 

“Mom is gone, Sammy. She has been for a long time. She tried to make Dad let you come home, but he made her leave too. Amenadiel too.” 

“D-Daddy hate me?” he asked with a sniffle. 

“It’s not your fault, Samael,” Amenadiel assured him. Whether it was his adult self’s fault was up for debate. They had both been stubborn and unyielding, but it definitely wasn’t this toddler’s fault. 

“Amenadiel’s right,” Michael told him. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Mikey stay?” Samael asked hopefully. 

“I’m sorry, Sammy. I can’t,” Michael told him. “I promise I’ll come visit you though. As often as I can.” When Samael nodded, Michael kissed his forehead. “Be good for Amenadiel and I’ll bring you a treat next time I come.” 

“Really?!” his face lit up just a bit. 

“Absolutely,” Michael said ruffling his hair before he disappeared.

Linda had been a bit taken aback at Michael’s presence and it was starting to hit her that Lucifer was gone forever, but she forced herself to keep it together for the child’s sake. Seeing someone that looked exactly like him was more than a little jarring. “Do you have any more questions, Samael?” she asked him. 

“Why Daddy mad?” Samael asked Amenadiel. 

“Because when you grew up you wanted to do things he didn’t like.”

“But grown ups do what dey want,” Samael said confused. 

“Yes. They should be able to, yes, but Dad disagreed,” Amenadiel told him. Since living on Earth he had fully come around to Lucifer’s thinking on that. He knew that the child he currently was didn’t know much about the concept of free will and he was just speaking of things like going out unattended and such, but hearing him say that, even this young, just pointed out how wrong he had been for so long. 

“We stay here den?” Samael asked curiously, still beyond hurt about his father hating him now, but needing to know what to expect. 

“I…um…” Amenadiel stammered. 

“I think that’s a wonderful idea. At least for a few days while we figure things out,” Linda said to both of them and Amenadiel nodded. “For now, I’m going to go out and get some things for Samael. He can’t walk around in nothing but Lucifer’s shirt forever and some toys and games to keep him busy are rather necessary,” she said, mostly just wanting to get out for a little while so she could cry without upsetting the child. 

“Alright,” Amenadiel told her pulling out his wallet. “I would guess that using Lucifer’s accounts would be a bad thing right now, but this one Lucifer set up in just my name,” Amenadiel told her handing over a card. Linda took it and headed out, barely making it out the door before the tears started flowing.


	5. Chapter 5

“Lucifer?” Samael asked looking down at his shirt in confusion. It wasn’t that much different from the robes he usually wore, but referring to it as a lightbringer shirt confused him. 

“Lucifer is what we called your older self,” Amenadiel explained. “That was his shirt. You were…he was…wearing it when the incident happened.” When Samael nodded, Amenadiel said. “There is one other thing we need to speak about rather urgently.” 

“Kay,” Samael said looking seriously up at his big brother. 

“The planet we are on now is called Earth. It’s inhabited by a race called humans.”

“Linda human?” Samael asked. 

“Yes. Linda is human. Now humans aren’t allowed to know about angels or Heaven or anything like that. They have a lot of stories about them, but they mostly think they’re make-believe and it has to stay that way.”

“Why?” 

“Because they can’t do the things that we can and if they know it might make them jealous. Father said that he would send us to a really bad place if we tell them,” Amenadiel explained. 

“Linda not know?” 

“She does know, but other people don’t and she had to promise not to tell. That means when anyone else is around, you have to keep your wings away.” When Samael nodded, he explained the other conclusion that he had, not realizing that Linda had come to the same one and already planted the seed. “That’s also why we are going to tell people that your older self is your Dad and that he died,” Amenadiel told him. 

“Lie?” Samael asked with wide eyes. “No lie.” 

“Sometimes, when dealing with humans, it’s important to lie so they don’t get hurt. You still shouldn’t lie most of the time. Only when Linda or myself tell you to, like with this,” Amenadiel told him. 

“No. Me no lie,” Samael said stubbornly. 

Amenadiel sighed heavily. “Okay, how about bluffing then. It’s not the same thing as your older self was fond of saying.” 

“What bluff?” 

“That’s like telling the truth but not all of it or letting it mean something else and not correcting people when they get it wrong,” Amenadiel explained, hoping that the toddler could understand. 

“So only tell some things and let people think wrong?” Samael said furrowing his brow. 

“Exactly,” Amenadiel said with relief. “I’ll take care of telling people that Lucifer was your father if I need to, so I’ll be the one lying. You just can’t say otherwise.”

“Kay,” Samael said, clearly not happy about it, but willing to go along. 

“Thank you,” Amenadiel said. “Now let’s go find something for dinner so we can get you ready for bed,” he told him. 

Amenadiel was just putting dinner on the table when Linda got back with an armload of bags. She dumped them on the couch for now and went to eat. She knew that she and Amenadiel needed to talk about their own baby and the future, but it could wait until Samael went to bed. Amenadiel could tell that her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but didn’t say anything about it. Once they finished eating, Linda pulled out a new pair of pajamas they bought and got Samael into them before tucking him into the nest they’d made for his nap. 

Once that was done, Amenadiel went out to the car to bring in the rest of what she’d bought and the two of them started sorting through it as they talked. “Can we speak about our child now?” Amenadiel asked. 

“Yeah. That’s probably a good thing,” Linda told him. 

“We should get married,” Amenadiel said. Normally he might have tried to do that differently, but with Samael to worry about now, it would greatly decrease his chances, not to mention the grief over his brother putting a damper on things. 

“No,” Linda shook her head. “I don’t want to get married just for the baby.” 

“But…” Amenadiel was confused. Wasn’t that the way it worked?

“I just want you to be here for me. To hold my hand. Tell me everything is going to be okay. If and when we get married, it will be because we love each other and no other reason.” 

Amenadiel smiled and reached for her hand. “Everything /is/ going to be okay,” he told her and she smiled back at him. “But I would like to live here. At least after the baby is born. It’s fine if we don’t share a room, but I want to be a part of it’s daily life.”

“That I can live with. Which means you might as well move in now. I know you don’t have anyplace to stay here since you just got back and it would be better for Samael to be stationary instead of moving out of here into a new place and back into here in a few months.” 

Amenadiel nodded. “That is reasonable,” Amenadiel told her. 

“And I’m good with sharing a room. Just not with the marriage part. Not yet,” she told him. Now that they were having a baby and Maze was gone anyway, her objections became a moot point. The baby was more important. And so was Samael. He needed a mother and a father figure in his life. She never expected she’d be starting with a toddler, but that beautiful innocent face had ensnared her heart just as easily as his adult self had. 

“Does this mean we are back together?” Amenadiel asked hopefully and Linda nodded so he kissed her and she melted into it. 

Once they were back to the folding and sorting, she started talking more about what she’d bought for Samael. “I just got the basics for clothes for now. We can do more shopping for that later. Some educational games and puzzles, picture books, coloring and drawing supplies. I want to take him with for toys so he can pick what he likes. I also got some baby gates for the top and bottoms of the stairs so he can’t fall down them.” 

“That’s very good thinking Linda. Thank you,” Amenadiel said relieved. While adult angels were invulnerable to any injury, children were not, though they were still not as fragile as humans. 

“I didn’t get any furniture or anything for him since I wasn’t sure what we were doing with the living arrangements but we can do that tomorrow.”

“Is the room he’s in now to be his bedroom?” Amenadiel asked. 

“No,” Linda shook her head. “I don’t like the idea of him downstairs while we’re upstairs. There are three more bedrooms up there, so we’ll do one of those up for him and the other can be the nursery for the baby,” she told him. 

“That does sound like a sound plan.” 

“Come on then. Help me take this stuff up and get it put away then we can get the baby gates set up and move him up there tomorrow.” 

They put the clothes away in the current dresser and put the games and puzzles under one of the bedside tables and the art and coloring supplies under the other. A toybox was on the list for furniture as well as a more appropriate bed and dresser and even a little drawing table or two. One for downstairs would be nice as well. 

Once they got everything set up, Linda and Amenadiel went to their room to reacquaint with each other before bed, but Linda had a hard time getting to sleep. “What’s wrong?” Amenadiel asked when he realized her trouble. 

“I just…can’t stop thinking about Lucifer. Knowing that I’m never gonna see him again. Not the way he was,” she said, trying to stop the tears from starting anew. 

“I know,” Amenadiel said sadly. “I feel the same. I told Samael that we were saying he was…dead.” 

Linda nodded against his chest and sniffled. “Yeah. In a way he is. It certainly feels that way,” she told him. “We should have a memorial service for him.”

Amenadiel scrunched up his nose. “I don’t think he would like that very much. The old him or the new him.”

Linda gave a watery chuckle. “I know, but those things aren’t for the dead anyway. They’re for the living. A way to say goodbye. Besides, it would be expected. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Especially since there’s no body. Even just a party at Lux in his honor or something.” 

“That he might like,” Amenadiel said with his own sad chuckle. 

“It would also help to get the word around about Samael, so we don’t have to answer questions forever. Get it all out of the way at once. Oh! We’ll need documents for him and everything,” Linda said with wide eyes. “I don’t know who Lucifer’s contacts are for that.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Amenadiel told her. “How soon will we need them?” 

“At least by next year for him to start nursery school,” she said realizing that it wasn’t that big of a deal until then. “So it was a yes on the memorial?” 

“Yes. We’ll do a party at Lux in a few days,” Amenadiel told her. 

“I miss him,” Linda said with a sniffle. 

“As do I,” Amenadiel said, holding her a little tighter.


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning, Linda was up early making breakfast, glad that she’d managed to make it down before Samael got up. She hadn’t slept much and she looked it, but she would manage. She was about halfway through breakfast when Samael stumbled in sleepily. “What doing?” 

“Cooking breakfast,” she told him. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.” She suddenly realized a problem though. She wanted to go wake Amenadiel up, but she wasn’t going to leave a toddler alone in a kitchen with the stove running and hot pots on it. Nor could she send him up to wake Amenadiel since she didn’t want him using the stairs alone and the baby gates were up anyway. Oh well. Amenadiel would just have to either get up himself or have cold breakfast and she would plan better next time. 

Samael was apparently still too sleepy to get mischievous or bored because she was able to finish breakfast without any trouble. She got the plates dished out and put them on the counter out of his reach to cool and put the pans in the sink. “Do you want to come upstairs with me to wake Amenadiel up?” she asked. 

That perked him right up as he looked up and grinned. “Uh-huh,” he said excitedly taking her hand when she reached out to him. Linda unlocked the baby gates and he had a little trouble navigating the stairs, but not a whole lot, her grip on his hand helping to keep him steady. Once she let him into Amenadiel’s and her room, he let go of her hand and jumped up on the bed and started bouncing. “Up! Up! Up!” he chanted and Linda laughed. 

Amenadiel groaned and grabbed Samael, pulling him down onto the bed and tickling him, just like he always had the last time his little brother was this age. Samael giggled and twisted trying to get away and eventually Amenadiel let him and got up, throwing a pair of pants on before heading downstairs. “You’re good with him,” Linda told him as he scooped up the toddler to carry him down the stairs.

“Myself and many of our other brothers and sisters were already grown by the time Samael and the other young ones were born. As the eldest, I tended to be the one the little ones flocked to, so I did most of the raising of them.” 

Linda smiled and nodded as she pulled the plates from the counter, cutting Samael’s into little bites before putting them all on the table. That explained why he was getting over the loss of his parents so easily. When he was confused and scared the loss was felt, but for the everyday stuff he was used to Amenadiel anyway. That and children at this age were remarkably adaptable, which definitely helped. 

Linda was just putting the plates in the sink when the doorbell rang. “Can you get that?” she asked Amenadiel. 

Amenadiel went to the door and opened it to find Dan standing there. “Hey man. I heard you already know the news, but we still have to do the official next of kin notifications and all,” he said uncomfortably. He had volunteered for this, knowing Amenadiel pretty well, but it didn’t make it easy. 

“Of course, come in,” Amenadiel said stepping aside and letting him in just as Linda came out from the kitchen. 

“Hi Dan,” she told him with a sad smile, knowing what he was here for. “Come on Samael. Let’s go take a look at your new room and we can decide how you want to decorate it.” Samael reached his arms up so she picked him up and carried him upstairs, him looking back at Amenadiel and Dan the whole way up. 

Once they were out of sight, Dan let out a heavy breath. “Wow. He really does look just like Lucifer. I thought Ella was exaggerating.” 

“No, she wasn’t. He is the spitting image of my brother at that age,” Amenadiel said sadly, motioning Dan to sit. 

“To get the official stuff out of the way, I need to let you know that, while we have yet to find a body, due to a confession from the killer, it is likely that your brother is dead.” When Amenadiel nodded gravely, Dan got less official. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe that Chloe would do this. I mean, you know that Lucifer and I never got along, especially lately, but he didn’t deserve this.”

“Thank you, Dan. That means a lot,” Amenadiel told him. 

“So, you’re keeping his son? Is that permanent or is his mother going to get him? I didn’t even know Lucifer had a son.” 

“No one knew,” Amenadiel told him thinking fast. “Lucifer had a lot of enemies that wouldn’t hesitate to use a child to get to him. But yes, I am keeping him now. His mother is also gone. A little over a year ago,” he kept to the truth as much as possible. Easier to keep straight. 

“Oh wow. As if it couldn’t get any worse, she actually orphaned a baby,” Dan said shaking his head, feeling for the kid. “Are you going to be having a funeral or anything for Lucifer?” he asked, intending to go, despite their rocky history. 

“Not a funeral, per se. You know how Lucifer was. He hated those sorts of things. We will be having a party in his honor at Lux though. A wake I believe it’s called. I’ll let you know the details once it’s set,” Amenadiel told him. 

“Thanks, man. I know there will be a lot of people at the precinct who want to come,” Dan told him. “Since Chloe confessed and is getting a plea deal, her sentencing is going to be Monday. I know some people get some comfort from that if you wanted to go.” He knew that the conversation was jumping around quite a bit, but his head was all a jumble and it was the best he could do. 

“I’m not sure yet,” Amenadiel told him. “I don’t want to leave Samael alone and I don’t know if he can handle seeing her again.”

“Wait, he was there?!” Dan asked in shock. 

Amenadiel nodded. “From what I understand, after she and the priest killed Lucifer, Samael came out and the priest went after him as well before Chloe shot him.”

“Oh god. Of all the things for a kid to see,” Dan said shaking his head. 

“Yes. It was quite traumatic for him,” Amenadiel told him. 

“So, you and…what was his name? Sam? Are living with Linda now?” 

“Samael actually, and yes. Since I just recently got back to town, I hadn’t secured a place to live yet and since it was learned that Linda is carrying my child and we only stopped seeing each other because of Mazikeen’s discomfort with the idea, we have decided that this decision is best for us all.”

“Oh wow. Congrats man. I mean, I know the timing could be better, but wow. A baby.”

“Thank you,” Amenadiel nodded. 

“Look, I should get back. We’re a little shorthanded and all, but if you need anything let me know okay?” Dan told him. He was feeling more than a little guilty despite not having any part in it. Between the fact that his ex-wife had done the deed and how he had been treating Lucifer recently it was hitting him pretty hard. 

“I will. Thank you,” Amenadiel told him. Once he saw Dan out he headed upstairs to Samael’s new room to find him chattering excitedly to Linda. 

“Amen’diel!” Samael said happily when he entered. “Linda say I can put stars on de ceiling.”

“Pretend stars only Samael,” Amenadiel said with a laugh. “We’ll get some when we go shopping.” 

Linda paled a bit at Amenadiel’s clarification, very glad he was there because she didn’t want to know what would happen with real flaming balls of gas on the ceiling. She had forgotten that Lucifer had made the stars. “Yes. Pretend stars. Definitely,” she managed to say. “Come on. Let’s pick out some clothes and then we’ll go shopping.” 

Once they had Samael dressed and ready to go, they hit the furniture store first, getting a toddler bed that could become a child’s bed since he was almost out of the toddler stage. They had decided against getting a new dresser when Samael liked the one that was currently there and since it matched the side tables that he also liked, there was no point. They got two child’s desks, one for his bedroom and one for the living room, along with a large toybox and a bookshelf. From there they got other furnishings like things to put on the walls, star stickers for the ceiling, and bedding. They wanted to save the fun stuff for last, but Samael was more than a little bored by the time they were halfway through that store and decided to wander off. 

Linda and Amenadiel forced themselves not to panic. Surely no one would let a toddler leave the store alone so he had to be there somewhere. It didn’t take long to find him. They just needed to follow the ruckus. He was sitting on the top of one of the shelving units tossing things down and giggling. Amenadiel rolled his eyes at his brother’s antics. “Samael. Come down from there this instant,” he said sternly, holding up his arms that could just barely reach the shelf. 

Samael pouted but did as he was told…by jumping. Thankfully, straight into Amenadiel’s arms and he caught him expertly, but Linda and the store clerk who had been trying to contain the situation nearly had heart attacks. “I’m so sorry for this,” Linda told him apologetically once Samael was safe. 

The clerk just waved it off as he started picking up the things that the toddler had been throwing. “It happens all the time. Not usually from the top shelf though.” 

“Yes, Samael is something of a climber,” Amenadiel told him, giving the boy a stern look. 

“Sorry,” Samael muttered, hiding his face in Amenadiel’s neck. 

“Since you misbehaved, we’re putting two of your new wall stickers back,” Linda told him and Samael nodded miserably, still hiding his face. She put back the two that he liked because they looked cool and kept the educational ones. Unlike the furniture store, this one they carried the bags out of. 

The next stop was the toy store and Samael’s eyes went wide. He was itching to go explore, but remembered what happened last time so he held tight to Amenadiel’s hand as they walked around. It wasn’t hard to pick out what he liked, even though he was overwhelmed beyond words because he would stop and stare when something caught his eye. He ended up with half a dozen stuffed animals along with other educational toys and only a few non-educational ones. They stopped for lunch before heading home to get the furniture deliveries and other than Samael kicking the chair legs incessantly through the meal, it went well.


	7. Chapter 7

Once they got home, Amenadiel asked Linda if she could keep Samael for a little while and handle the furniture delivery while he handled some things for the party and maybe even getting some of Lucifer’s affairs in order. No sooner than the words were out of his mouth though, Samael started crying and attached to his leg. “No go!” 

Amenadiel sighed and looked at Linda for help. “Why don’t we wait until the furniture gets here then we can all go by the penthouse and see if the manager can come up and talk with us for a while?” she suggested. It wasn’t unreasonable after everything he’d been through for Samael to be clingy right now. The fact that he was fine when Amenadiel was in another room meant that there was nothing to worry about. They just had to be patient with him. 

“Very well. If you think that’s best,” Amenadiel agreed. It was only another hour before the furniture got there and was placed appropriately and they piled back in the car to head for Lux. Thankfully, the cleaning up of the blood also got rid of the ritual circle so other than some of the furniture being out of place, there was no sign that anything happened. It still didn’t make it any easier to be there though, but it was necessary. 

Linda burst into tears as soon as they got out of the elevator, feeling the loss so much more being here, and Amenadiel used his free arm to pull her to his side, feeling his own eyes tear up quite a bit as well. Samael didn’t understand why they were upset, but reached over for Linda to take him since she seemed more upset and he gave her a big hug. She smiled through her tears as she hugged him back. “Thank you, sweetie. I needed that,” she told him and he beamed. It made him happy to make people happy. 

“I’ll call downstairs and ask Jeff to come up when he gets a free moment,” Amenadiel said pulling out his phone. It was a short conversation before Amenadiel told her, “He said it’s really busy but he’ll make the time as soon as he can. In the meantime, we can get started up here.” He headed to the safe and put in the code to open the main portion.

“You know the code?” Linda asked curiously, remembering when she and…someone she didn’t want to think about, had tried to break in. 

“Yes. Maze and I both knew the code in case of emergency,” he told her as he dug through looking for the envelope. “Here we go,” he said, pulling the stack of envelopes out. 

“What’s that?” Linda asked curiously. 

“Wills,” he told her. “He wasn’t sure what would happen when and under what circumstances, so he had a few of them to choose from. Maze,” he set that one aside. “Chloe, Beatrice, blank,” he set those aside as well, keeping the ones marked Linda and Amenadiel. “I say we use mine, but put most of the money back into a trust for him once he grows up. We’ll keep some and give some to Beatrice as well since he wanted her cared for too.” 

Linda nodded. “That sounds like a good plan. What about the club and his other holdings?” 

“I’m not sure. We could hire people to manage them or liquidate them for more money and let him reinvest as he wants when he’s grown. What do you think?” 

“Well even with paying the managers it would be more cash coming in than just sitting there, so I say we keep them and have them managed and just let him decide what to sell or keep when he grows up,” Linda suggested. 

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Amenadiel said, destroying all of the wills but his own as he was instructed by Lucifer back when this system was put into place. “There should be an empty duffel bag or two in his closet if you want to grab them,” he said as he started cleaning out the rest of the safe. He wasn’t comfortable leaving everything here with anyone able to come in and out at any time. He would get a safe installed at Linda’s to keep it in for Samael for later or for emergencies. He completely understood Lucifer’s desire to have cash on hand in case it was needed and they would have to get documents for Samael as well, not to mention better documents for himself and that wouldn’t come cheap and was best handled with cash. 

They had just finished that when they heard the elevator ding and headed back to the living area to meet with Jeff. After the becoming common ‘holy crap Lucifer had a kid’ moment, he told them that business was crazy since the incident hit the news, even if half the patrons were crying and the other half weren’t much better. He easily agreed to close the club on Friday night for a private party for Lucifer and promised to make himself available to discuss the future of the club afterwards. Amenadiel did assure him that he didn’t intend on closing it and wanted to keep all of Lucifer’s handpicked staff, so that eased his mind quite a bit. 

On the way home, Samael fell asleep in the car in his new carseat that he had only argued about a little bit and they took the opportunity while he was sleeping to stop by a probate lawyer and drop off the will. There would be papers and such to sign later, but first it had to be authenticated, so it was a quick stop that didn’t wake Samael up at all. Once they got home was a different story though, and only partially because they needed him to wake up so he wouldn’t be up all night. He had taken a late nap due to all the running around they’d done. As a result, he was more than a little cranky and willful the rest of the day, but an early bedtime took care of it. 

Linda and Amenadiel were just going to bed when he stumbled into their room crying and Amenadiel quickly picked him up and set him in the center of the bed between them. “What’s wrong, little one?” Amenadiel asked worriedly. Samael didn’t say much coherent, but it was Linda who got the gist first that he’d had a nightmare about the priest yelling at him about being evil and then getting shot. It took a little while to get him calmed down and then back to sleep in their bed and Amenadiel asked, “Is this normal?” 

Linda nodded sadly. “Unfortunately, it’s completely normal. After everything he’s been through the last few days, I would be more worried if he wasn’t having nightmares. We just need to keep talking him through them like this and he should get better over time.” 

Over the next few nights, Samael ended up in their bed every night, but he was getting less and less panicked by the nightmares so Linda said that was progress at least. Finally it was time for the party at Lux. Linda and Amenadiel intentionally gave Samael a late nap that day so he could stay up later. Since it was a private party, there was no restriction on children being there which was a good thing since Trixie desperately wanted to go too, despite being so ashamed of her mother’s actions. Or perhaps because of it. 

Linda and Amenadiel got there a little after five with Samael, just after he woke up, and it wasn’t supposed to start until six so that gave them a little time to check things out and let Samael run around the empty space. They weren’t comfortable letting him do so later since there would be a lot of people there that they didn’t know and he was little enough to get trampled besides. The staff watched him with equal amounts of happiness and sadness. 

Once people started to arrive half an hour later, they called Samael back and Amenadiel picked him up. The first ones there were Dan and Trixie. “She wanted to be early to talk to you first. I told her it wasn’t necessary but she insisted,” Dan told Amenadiel. 

Amenadiel nodded and led the distraught child to a booth to sit down. He could guess what this was about. Linda and Dan followed them. “What did you want to talk to me about, little one?” 

“I’m so sorry for what my mom did. I don’t know why she would do that, but…but…”

Amenadiel reached out his free hand to lift her chin. “There is nothing about what happened that could possibly be your fault, Trixie,” Amenadiel assured her. “You can’t control her actions and you couldn’t have stopped her. More than that, you meant a lot to my brother and he wouldn’t want to see you sad like this.”

“No sad,” Samael said squirming out of Amenadiel’s arms and into Trixie’s lap, giving her a big hug. It had worked for Linda the other day and made her happy, so maybe it would work for this one too.

Trixie couldn’t help but smile as she hugged Samael back. “He feels like Lucifer,” she said happily. 

Amenadiel and Linda looked at each other nervously before Linda asked, “How so?” 

“Lucifer always had this feeling of comfort around him, you know? Like he could make everything okay,” she told them. “I guess it makes sense since Samael is his son.” 

Linda smiled brightly. She hadn’t noticed that aura around him before, but now that Trixie mentioned it, she was right. That was probably why everyone was always drawn to him so much, even beyond sexually, and Samael definitely had that going for him as well. She resolved to ask Amenadiel about that later.


	8. Chapter 8

Since Samael seemed perfectly happy with Trixie who quickly started talking with him and playing with him, Amenadiel took that opportunity to pull Dan away for a conversation. “I’m not sure of amounts yet, since the lawyers are still going through everything, but I wanted you to get a heads up that Lucifer left some money for Trixie.”

“He did? But he hated kids?” Dan asked in shock. 

“He did. Generally speaking. But her support and acceptance of him despite that meant a lot to him. Perhaps some of it was because of his feelings for her mother, but not all of it,” Amenadiel told him. 

“I know you said you don’t know amounts yet, but do you have a rough estimate?” 

“No. Only that it will be five percent of his cash assets,” Amenadiel told him. He and Linda had decided that they would split five percent, Trixie would get five percent, and the other ninety percent plus all the investment incomes would be left for Samael. 

“Okay. Five percent is good,” Dan said relieved that it wasn’t some huge amount. “That was really good of him.” He wasn’t sure what else to say to that, so they headed back over to Linda, Trixie and Samael and Trixie was giggling and laughing again. 

The next person to arrive was Ella, also a little early, but not overly so and she immediately came over with a sad smile. “He looks a little happier than last time I saw him,” she said leaning down to talk to Samael. 

“Yeah, you caught him at a particularly bad moment. That’s not to say he doesn’t have his tantrums from time to time, but they are generally few and far between,” Linda said with a chuckle. 

“Yeah, well. He is Lu-Luc-Lucifer’s son,” Ella said stumbling over the name as her waterworks started again. 

Samael noticed another crying person and held his arms up to Ella and said, “Up.” She smiled sadly but picked him up only to be caught in a hug. “No sad,” Samael told her. 

Ella couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yep the great hugs are genetic too,” she joked as she hugged him back. “Thank you, Samael.” 

“Welcome,” he said, as he let go and settled in her arms. As long as his big brother was around, he didn’t mind anyone holding him. 

“He is adorable,” Dan said with a smile at the angelic little boy. 

“He really is,” Ella agreed, pulling her cross necklace from his tiny hands with a chuckle and putting it down her shirt so that it wouldn’t distract him again. “But I’m not at all surprised knowing who his father was.” 

“I miss Daddy,” Samael chimed in, getting a little sad of his own, but Ella happily returned the favor of a hug, cheering him up a bit. 

About that time, people started arriving in droves, many of them coming to give condolences to Amenadiel and cry over the orphaned little boy who wasted no time in giving his hugs and cheering them up. Amenadiel was more than a little surprised when Gabriel showed up, but wasted no time pulling him into a hug. “Gabe. I’m glad you came. Is it just you?” 

Samael heard Amenadiel call him Gabe and looked at the newcomer curiously, currently being held by Dan whose animosity for the elder obviously didn’t translate to the younger. He could see hints of his barely older brother and decided that it must be him, especially as Gabriel answered. “Yeah. Just me. Michael wanted to come but was afraid of giving people too much of a shock.” 

“Gabe!” Samael cried holding his hands out to his brother who quickly took him. 

“Hey there Sammy. Long time no see, little guy,” he grinned at the boy. 

“Yes, I can imagine that there would be quite a bit of hysteria if Michael showed up,” Amenadiel said with a chuckle.

“Who’s Michael?” Ella asked. 

“Lucifer’s twin brother. Identical twin,” Linda told her. “I almost fainted when he came by the house a few days ago.” 

“Oh. Wow. Yeah. I can see that being an issue. But he shouldn’t have to stay away from his brother’s wake over it,” Ella said. 

Gabriel looked at her and said, “You must be Ella. Don’t worry. Michael’s not really much for big parties anyway. Kind of a stick in the mud really.” Ella beamed at the idea that Lucifer must have talked about her enough for his brother to be able to recognize her so easily. 

“So the exact opposite of Lucifer then,” Dan joked. 

“Pretty much,” Gabriel quipped, bouncing his now much littler little brother. 

Once everyone had split up to mingle, Samael back with Amenadiel, he and Linda were found by someone that they hadn’t quite expected to see. “Candy, hi!” Linda said in surprise. 

“Linda. Amenadiel,” she said with a sad nod. “And this must be Samael. I’ve heard so much about him tonight but I didn’t want to interrupt until you were free.” 

“Yes, this is Samael,” Amenadiel said. 

“Who is he really?” Candy asked curiously. 

“What do you mean?” Linda asked. 

“I know who and what Lucifer is…was…remember? I also know that the chances of him fathering a child, much less not knowing about said child, are slim to none.” 

Amenadiel sighed. He hadn’t realized that Candy had known about Lucifer. He handed Samael off to Linda. “Why don’t you go find him a snack. He looks a little hungry,” he said pointedly. Linda nodded and left, and once they were out of earshot, Amenadiel pulled Candy back to the corner so no one else could overhear either. “Chloe Decker found out about him being the devil and took off to Rome and found an extremist priest. They did a ritual to send him back to Hell, but it only sent part of him and left behind the little angel that he used to be. The part of him that is in Hell refuses to return and retake back that side of himself.” 

“Oh ouch,” Candy said with wide eyes. “So the first and only person he’s ever loved turned around and killed him for all intents and purposes…I don’t think I’d want to take back the part that could feel that pain either.” 

“Oh it’s worse than that. She used his feelings for her to do it. They were on a date when she drugged him.” 

Candy actually growled at that. “She’s lucky she’s in jail or I would tear her apart myself. I thought they would be so good together, too.”

“She had us all fooled,” Amenadiel told her. “I had been playing matchmaker for a while before it happened, myself.” 

“How much does the little one know? I’m guessing Samael was his original name?” 

“He knows that he used to be grown-up and something happened to make him little again. That’s about it. Yes, Samael was his original name,” Amenadiel told her. 

“I like it. He told me that he’d once had another name, but refused to tell me what it was,” she chuckled. “I do miss him dearly.” 

“As do we all,” Amenadiel said sadly. “I can only hope his other self comes to his senses.”

“I doubt he will anytime soon, if ever. He’s just been handed the golden opportunity to literally run away from his feelings. He’s not gonna give that up,” she pointed out. “I’m guessing you don’t have papers or anything for him yet?” Candy asked and Amenadiel shook his head. “I have a copy of Lucifer’s ‘little black book’ so to speak. Not women, but contacts, of course. I can send you some names.” Lucifer never kept the numbers of his hookups. If they wanted more they would come back for it, but he never sought them out. Contacts however, were like gold.

“I would very much appreciate that,” Amenadiel told her. 

“No problem. And if you ever need anything you let me know, okay?” 

“Do you have any ideas as to who to put as the mother on the birth certificate?” Amenadiel asked hopefully. He and Linda had been scratching their head over that for a while now. 

“Put Alison Jones. I’ll get you her info,” Candy told him. “She was a friend of mine who died almost a year ago. Lucifer actually helped me catch her killer, but she has no other living family anywhere.” 

“Okay. Thank you, Candy,” Amenadiel said relieved. 

“I’ll get in touch in the next couple days. I’ll sent it to Linda’s email I’m guessing?” Amenadiel nodded so they headed back to the party. 

Not long after, Gabriel found Amenadiel and asked, “Do you think it would be okay if I did a song for Lucifer?” he asked gesturing to the piano. 

Amenadiel smiled and nodded and went over to tell the deejay to cut the music. Gabriel went over to the piano and said into the mic, “Many of you here know that Lucifer wasn’t really close with his family, and that’s something that I for one have always regretted. I’ve lost the chance to reconnect in person, but here’s what I always wish I would have said a long time ago.” With that he started the opening riff to the song Brothers. 

Ramblers in the wilderness we can't find what we need  
We get a little restless from the searching  
Get a little worn down in between  
Like a bull chasing the matador is the man left to his own schemes  
Everybody needs someone beside em' shining like a lighthouse from the sea

Brother let me be your shelter  
Never leave you all alone  
I can be the one you call  
When you're low  
Brother let me be your fortress  
When the night winds are driving on  
Be the one to light the way  
Bring you home

Face down in the desert now there's a cage locked around my heart  
I found a way to drop the keys where my failures were  
Now my hands can't reach that far  
I ain't made for a rivalry, I could never take the world alone  
I know that in my weakness I am stronger  
It's your love that brings me home

Brother let me be your shelter  
I'll never leave you all alone  
I can be the one you call  
When you're low  
Brother let me be your fortress  
When the night winds are driving on  
Be the one to light the way  
Bring you home


	9. Chapter 9

Gabriel’s song started a run on the piano as everyone who could play wanted to do a song for Lucifer. Some were better than others, of course, and some people wanted to sing and quickly dragooned those who could play to back them up. It ended up turning into a huge karaoke night from there. Amenadiel and Linda took Samael home around eleven though, but they later heard that the party went on until the sun came up. Lucifer would have appreciated that. 

Samael fell asleep in the car on the way home and didn’t even stir as Amenadiel carried him inside and put him in bed. That night Samael actually spent the entire night in his own bed and after that he only ended up in Linda and Amenadiel’s room once or twice a week. Monday evening they got the call from Dan that Chloe had been sentenced to life, but the plea deal had taken the death penalty off the table at least. 

Tuesday the email from Candy came through and Amenadiel started making calls. Getting ID and birth certificates were easy it seemed. Social security cards were a lot more difficult and only one of the contacts that Candy had sent promised to be able to do that with a price tag of one million cash each. They didn’t have much of a choice though. Once they got it all a week later, Amenadiel was finally able to close out Lucifer’s estate and draw up custody papers for Samael. It turned out that five percent of Lucifer’s cash value was a hundred and twelve million and both Linda and Amenadiel goggled at that amount. They knew that Lucifer was pretty rich, but they had no idea just HOW rich. Still, they’d made the decision no matter how much it ended up being, so they divided it up how they originally agreed. 

They did make the decision though to only put a hundred million in a trust fund for Trixie and give the other twelve to Dan. “No, I can’t take that,” he protested. 

“Lucifer’s intention was to see Trixie taken care of,” Amenadiel told him. “She can’t touch the trust fund until she’s twenty-one. That gives you a million a year to take care of her until then.” It took a little more arguing, but Dan finally agreed to take it.

At one point, not long after that, Samael came in with a heavy pout. “Amen’diel. Wings bad itchy.” 

“Come here, Samael and let me see,” Amenadiel told him, leaning forward on the couch as he approached. Samael looked at Linda and then back at Amenadiel. “No, it’s okay. You can show your wings in front of Linda. Just not other humans.” That explained why he had been holding his wings back for the last month. Amenadiel thought he had been clear about that, but apparently not. 

Samael sighed in relief and turned his back to Amenadiel and spread his wings wide. Amenadiel reached out and started combing his fingers gently through the wings, smiling as the downy feathers were being replaced. “Your flight feathers are starting to come in. It won’t be long before I can start teaching you to fly,” Amenadiel explained. 

“Where would you do that?” Linda asked curiously, knowing that they couldn’t be seen. 

“As long as no one sees us up close, we can do that anywhere,” Amenadiel told her. “From a distance we have a natural cloaking that just makes us look like large birds.” 

“Oh. That’s convenient,” she said with a nod. 

“Yes. It’s a little something father added when he started sending us on missions down here.”

“Are you sure that Samael would have it since he’s from a time before that?” Linda asked worriedly. 

“I’ll make sure he does. It’s something that I can give him anyway.” 

“Me fly?” Samael asked happily. 

“Not quite yet, but soon. Maybe a few weeks,” Amenadiel told him and the child beamed. After that, Amenadiel made sure to groom his wings every day. He would need it until the feathers settled in completely. 

A few days after that, Linda caught him with one of his picture books whispering the words and she looked over his shoulder to see that he was getting them all right. Amenadiel walked in the room as she asked, “Samael, can you read that?” 

“Uh-huh,” Samael said proudly. 

Amenadiel chuckled and said, “I wondered how long until he picked that up.”

“What do you mean?” Linda asked. 

“We’ve been reading to him often. You remember how L-Lucifer was. He never asked questions or had to be taught things. He learned through observing and reading. He was always like that,” Amenadiel said sadly. 

Linda nodded and sniffled a little, getting teary like she always did when Samael did something to remind her so much of his older self. The pregnancy hormones weren’t helping that either. “I miss him,” she said sadly when Amenadiel hugged her. 

“I know. So do I,” Amenadiel said sadly. 

Now that he could read, Samael began devouring books and his speech patterns started advancing in leaps and bounds. By the time he had his first flying lesson almost a month later, he was speaking in full sentences, though his grammar wasn’t quite perfect yet. Amenadiel decided to take them to the penthouse and take off from the balcony there, it being one of the few places in the city that he could be sure that no one would be close enough to see. 

Amenadiel wrapped his hands around Samael’s tiny waist and went up in the air, telling the boy to flap his wings. It took a little while to get the right angle and motions, but soon he felt the pressure on his hands ease so he slowly let go, staying close enough to grab him when he faltered. “Look Amenadiel! Me flying!” Samael cried happily, before his excitement caused him to lose control and he started to fall. 

Amenadiel easily caught him with a chuckle. “I saw that. But you need to pay attention to your flying rather than talking.” 

Samael nodded and started flapping his wings again and Amenadiel let go when he could feel him being supported by his own wings. He had to catch him a few more times before he turned back and carried the exhausted little angel back to the balcony to head home. At Samael’s insistence, they went out like that every morning after Linda went to work, and needless to say, he slept like the dead for his naps. Amenadiel was just glad that he got breaks two days a week. Gabriel and Michael both insisted on helping teach him to fly and each of them took a lesson a week, not able to sneak away more often without being noticed. 

It was almost a month before he was able to take off, land, and fly around for hours. When Linda asked Amenadiel if he was worried about Samael trying to get into heaven one day or even going to Hell to meet his older self, Amenadiel just shook his head. “His wings won’t develop enough to traverse dimensions until he’s a few centuries old.” 

Linda was relieved to hear that. The last thing she wanted was for him to have to face the rejection of his family or the horrors of Hell. Unfortunately, now that he knew how to fly, he had taken to flying around the house as well. They knew it was a disaster waiting to happen, but he never seemed to listen to them. They’d ended up having to take down the ceiling fans already after he got clipped for the third time and still wouldn’t keep his feet on the ground. 

It had been about six months since the transformation, and Ella was coming by that Saturday to take a now /very/ pregnant Linda out to lunch. Amenadiel had noticed her arrive so went to open the door before she could ring the bell. “Linda will be down in a moment. She’s helping Samael change,” Amenadiel told her. Samael had spilled spaghetti sauce, and rather than have a seven months pregnant woman stooping to clean up the floor, Amenadiel took that part while Linda cleaned up the child. 

About that time they heard Linda exclaim, “Samael Morningstar, how many times have we told you about flying in the house!” Before Amenadiel could manage to find a way to keep it from Ella, Samael came flying down the stairs giggling. Amenadiel was just opening his mouth to say something when Samael noticed Ella standing there and his eyes went wide and he immediately snapped his wings away. Unfortunately he was still at the high ceiling and no one was quick enough to catch him before he crashed into the floor and burst into sobs. 

Ella was too shocked to move, but Linda and Amenadiel were soon by his side. “It’s alright, Samael. What hurts?” Amenadiel asked worriedly, unable to see any visible wounds, but that didn’t always mean anything. 

“I’m sorry…didn’t mean to…human saw…please don’t send me to the bad place…I’ll be good…promise,” he managed through his sobs.


	10. Chapter 10

Linda gasped and covered her mouth as her eyes filled with tears at Samael’s terror, Amenadiel picked him up and carried him over to the couch, Linda right behind, wishing she could still pick him up like that. They both shot Ella an apologetic look, but this came first. Ella just nodded, with her own sad and confused look. She wasn’t going to argue at all. As much as she wanted answers, there was a scared child that needed attention first. 

Amenadiel sat Samael in his lap, and Linda cuddled him from the side as Amenadiel said, “No one is sending you anywhere, little one. It’ll be okay.” 

“B-but…h-humans can’t know…you said…” 

“One human here and there as an accident is okay. Well, not okay really, but acceptable. Just like how Linda knows,” Amenadiel tried to explain. 

“It was just an accident, sweetie. We know that, and I’m sure Ella won’t tell anyone,” Linda assured him. 

Ella snapped herself out of it at that and went over to sit on the coffee table in front of him. “Sure won’t,” she said with a smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t get you in trouble, little man.” 

Now that Samael was calming down, Amenadiel told him, “That doesn’t mean that you won’t be in trouble for flying in the house, mind you, but no one is going to send you to the bad place.” 

“P-promise?” Samael asked looking up at them all desperately. 

“We promise, baby,” Linda said, kissing his forehead. Honestly as long as they could keep news outlets and camera crews and the like out of the picture, they should be fine. It wasn’t like Lucifer was ever subtle either. 

“Maybe we should do lunch another day,” Ella suggested. 

Amenadiel was the one to shake his head though when Linda looked torn. He knew how much she needed to get out of the house and get a break for a while. “We’ll be fine,” he assured them both. “You two go ahead.” 

Linda nodded, blinking the tears back from her eyes as she hugged Samael and kissed his head again. “You be good, and we’ll talk about your punishment for flying in the house when I get home.” 

Samael nodded and hugged her back tightly. “I sorry. I be good,” he promised.

“I know, sweetie,” Linda told him, knowing that the promise to be good wouldn’t last long though. He was a toddler and still Lucifer at that. Mischief was going to be a constant she was sure. “And you know we always love you right?” 

“Love you too,” Samael said with a smile as he snuggled back into Amenadiel’s lap. 

Linda got up and motioned to Ella, knowing that she would be spending most of lunch answering questions, but not minding so much. “Catch you later, little dude,” Ella told him, getting a fist bump before heading out. 

Once they were in the car, Ella asked nervously, “Can I ask some questions or should I just completely forget everything I saw and heard?” 

Linda chuckled. “You can ask questions. Now that you know, there’s no point trying to hide things.” 

“So Lucifer really was the devil, then,” Ella said, having come to that conclusion the minute she saw the wings on his son. When Linda nodded, she asked, “Does that mean he’s back in…in hell now? Can’t he come back again?”

“It’s rather complicated,” Linda told her. 

“It always is,” Ella said wryly. 

“Yes, Lucifer is back in Hell, but he’s not the same as he was. See Chloe and the priest didn’t just kill him. They did a ritual to banish him back to Hell. To banish /the devil/ back to Hell…”

Ella sucked in a sharp breath. “Samael isn’t his son is he,” she figured out. 

“Wow. You’re quick,” Linda said with a sad laugh. 

“So…what…this ritual split him in two, sending the bad parts to hell and leaving the little angel here?” Ella asked, trying to wrap her head around it. 

“Essentially,” Linda told her. “The part of him in Hell isn’t evil, per se. He’s not capable of actual evil. He’s a punisher of evil, and /was/ a protector of the innocent as well.” 

“So now he’s just a ruthless punisher with no mercy or anything?” Ella guessed. 

“Exactly. He’s essentially had his emotions, including compassion, severed from him and left behind in Samael. He /could/ come back and theoretically remerge with that part of himself, but he refused. Threatened Amenadiel if he tried to take him by force and since he’s in Hell with legions of demons at his command…”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t work so well. Can’t say as I blame him for not wanting to though. I mean, it’s not healthy at all, but this is Lucifer we’re talking about. He has to know on some level the pain that’s waiting for him after what Chloe did. Everyone could tell how head over heels he was for her and for her to get his hopes up like that just to do this…I couldn’t imagine how he would feel.” 

“I know. I understand it too. Like you said though, it’s not healthy. Lucifer has never been worried about the healthy thing though,” Linda said sadly. 

“At least we still have a part of him,” Ella tried to cheer her up. 

“I know,” she sighed heavily. “But it’s not the same. It’s still not /him/ and he never will be.” 

“I know,” Ella sympathized, realizing that her plan had failed. “He’ll grow up still, but he won’t be the same person this time. I mean, I can’t say that I want him to go through the suffering that Lucifer did, but it still made him who he was…this is coming out all wrong.”

“No, it’s okay. I know what you mean,” Linda assured her. 

“I’m guessing the bad place he was so afraid of was Hell?” Ella asked. “Why would he be so worried about that? How much does he know?” 

Linda got a haunted look on her face. “When his father found out what had happened, he wanted Samael sent to Hell for his other self to raise since ‘he’d end up there eventually anyway’ because ‘if he rebelled once he’d do it again’. Amenadiel walked out and took banishment to raise him here on Earth, but God told him that if any of us caused trouble on Earth, meaning exposure, that we would all be sent to Hell, including this baby,” she explained rubbing her belly. 

“And he knows that?” Ella asked horrified. 

“Not all of it, no. Just that he has to keep the secrets from humans or we’ll be sent to ‘the bad place’ as he calls it. You know how willful Lucifer was. We didn’t know how else to emphasize the seriousness of this particular rule. He gets into plenty of mischief, but this is a big one.”

“Yeah. I get that,” Ella said with a nod. It did make sense, as much as it hurt having to threaten a child with something so bad, it wasn’t their fault. They weren’t the one who made the threat and they were just doing whatever was necessary to protect him, even from himself. “So, he flies around the house huh?” she asked with a grin, wanting to get on to happier subjects.

“Incessantly,” Linda said with an amused roll of her eyes. “Ever since he learned to fly a few months ago, he never stops, no matter how many times we punish him for it.”

Ella laughed. “Well he is Lucifer. What do you expect?” 

“Don’t remind me,” Linda laughed with her. “And the worst part is that he’s just like…himself…in every way. You can’t even stay mad at him because he’s still so sweet and giving and kind…”

“Not to mention completely adorable with a smile that brightens the world,” Ella added. 

“Exactly! It’s so frustrating. It makes me feel like a villain every time I punish him for something.” 

“But you know if you don’t, he’ll turn out even worse,” Ella said with an amused nod. “I get it. Am I being a bad friend if I say, better you than me?” 

“Yes,” Linda teased, smacking Ella on the arm as they pulled into the restaurant laughing. 

Lunch was spent with many more questions and answers, mostly about Amenadiel and the baby this time, but a few about Samael thrown in. Ella immediately offered to stay with him when the baby was born, as she had more than once, but this time Linda gratefully accepted. She had been worried about him keeping the secret for the possibly days that she would be gone and Amenadiel being in and out, but now that she didn’t have to worry about that aspect, it was a lot easier. 

When Ella took Linda home, she asked, “Is it okay if I hang out for a little while?”

“Of course,” Linda assured her. She understood the need to spend a little time with him after learning the truth. She missed Lucifer as much as the rest of them and now that she knew they still had a small part of him, even beyond the son factor, she wanted to see for herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll be starting time skips more in the next chapter to get things moving. Not sure if Trixie and Dan are going to find out. Open to suggestions on that one.


	11. Chapter 11

Once Ella and Linda came in the house, Ella went to play with Samael who was drawing at his little desk. “Whatcha drawing?” she asked curiously. It just looked like a bunch of squiggles to her. It made her giggle to remember that he didn’t do much better as an adult either. She remembered the few times he’d tried to draw something. 

“Home,” he said sadly. 

“Home as in heaven?” she asked. 

Samael nodded. “Don’t have to be careful there. Everyone flies around all the time.” 

“Aww buddy. I’m sorry,” Ella said pulling him into a hug. “At least here you get to hang out with me though right?” she tried weakly to cheer him up. “And Linda, and her new baby in a few months. Earth can be fun too.” 

“I guess,” Samael said, cheered up a little bit from the hug. 

“Can I draw too?” Ella asked, and Samael smiled and slid a piece of paper over to her, so she sat on the floor and used the other side of the desk. 

While Ella was playing with Samael, Linda asked Amenadiel, “Did you already punish him?” 

“I told him that I wasn’t going to take him flying for a week and if he flew in the house again, the week would start over,” Amenadiel told her. “I also told him that you might add more onto that.” 

Linda nodded. “That’s a valid punishment. We’ll also say no dessert tonight, just so there’s something coming from me too.” Amenadiel easily agreed. 

“How much did you tell her?” Amenadiel asked. 

“A lot,” Linda told him. “Everything about Samael and Lucifer. I didn’t see the point in hiding it given the circumstances.” 

While she was drawing and chatting with Samael, Ella was also thinking a lot about everything she’d learned. When Samael got bored with drawing about an hour later and went to get a toy to play with, Ella went over to Amenadiel. “Can we talk for a minute? Alone?” she glanced at Samael so that Linda would know that it wasn’t her that she was excluding and Linda just smiled at her. 

“Come with me,” Amenadiel told her, heading outside to the sitting area. “What is it?” 

“I was wondering…I’m not sure if you’re allowed to tell me or not…How do I make sure I get into heaven? I mean, as much as I miss Lucifer and all, Hell kinda scares the crap out of me and I bet I don’t even have any inkling of how bad it really is, and I’m not really happy with the big guy at the moment after what he did to Samael and you and everything, but I don’t want that to make me go to Hell either…”

Amenadiel cut her off with a chuckle. “There is no rule against me telling you, but my father has no say over who ends up where. That is decided by the amount of guilt and evil in your heart at the time of death. No amount of worship will send you to heaven if your heart is filled with guilt, nor will any lack of worship send you to hell if your conscience is clear.” 

Ella let out a sigh of relief. “So just keep an open heart and let go of my guilt and I’ll be good? Even if I stop going to church and all?” 

“Yes,” Amenadiel told her. “I wouldn’t worry. Heaven was designed for souls such as yours.” 

“Okay. Good. Thank you, Amenadiel. I just can’t see continuing to worship a God that wanted to send that bright beautiful baby in there to be raised in Hell, not to mention kicking him and you out to begin with. And banning your baby who’s not even born yet to have done anything wrong…It’s just…cruel.” She knew that she couldn’t take him to task over it in prayer. That would mean letting on that Samael spilled the beans and she’d promised not to get him in trouble. She wasn’t sure if that would or not, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She didn’t have any intention of continuing to worship him though. Nope. 

“Yes, father definitely does have a cruel streak,” Amenadiel agreed. 

“Well I should get going. Thanks again,” she said getting up and heading for her car. 

On the way home she considered everything from the point of view of Chloe too, and when it dawned on her, she changed direction and headed for the jail. She had a few things to say to her ex-friend. She managed to get there a little bit before the end of visiting hours and since Chloe was in minimum security due to her plea deal, she was led to a room with small round tables dotted around that was currently empty. 

Once Chloe arrived and sat down, she said, “Ella? I didn’t expect to see you.”

“I didn’t intend to ever see you again either, but I just learned the whole story and I have a few things to say to you,” she said coldly, only feeling a little bit of sympathy for how run down Chloe looked. 

“Okay,” Chloe said, bracing herself for what was coming. 

“First of all, I want to say that I don’t forgive you for what you did. I hate you for taking him away from us. I don’t care if he was the devil, anyone who ever met him could tell that there wasn’t an evil bone in his body and you were either stupid or blind to think otherwise and I don’t care which.” She wanted for that to sink in before she continued. “That said, I get what you did by confessing to Lucifer’s murder and claiming to have dumped the body. You were protecting that beautiful baby that was left in his place and I respect you for that.” 

Chloe managed a slight smile at that. It was something. Probably the closest she would ever get to forgiveness from anyone. “Can you tell me…how is he?”

“He’s perfect,” Ella said, as much to rub it in as anything else. “He’s so much like Lucifer was in so many ways. Always so thoughtful and tries to make everyone happy, except instead of showering them with attention and bringing coffee and pastries, he draws pictures and gives hugs. Linda and Amenadiel are raising him. They’re back together and have a baby of their own on the way, and Samael is so excited to meet him. He’s even helping with the nursery as much as he can and practically waits on Linda hand and foot since her stomach is getting too big for her to get around as well anymore.”

“I’m glad he’s doing well,” Chloe said in relief. 

“Yes, it’s just too bad the cost was so high,” Ella said getting up to leave. “I hope you rot in here, Decker, but at least you had the guts to own up to it and save that baby any more pain. I still wouldn’t want to be you when you meet the other half though.” Chloe had nothing to say to that as she watched Ella walk out. It was nothing that she didn’t think of every day anyway. She knew where she was going and she knew that she deserved everything that was coming. That didn’t mean it didn’t terrify her though. 

It was almost two month later when Ella got the call in the middle of the night that the baby was coming. “Linda said that the contractions are still far apart so there’s time for you to get here before we go to the hospital so we don’t have to wake Samael up.” 

“I’ll be there as quick as I can,” Ella said, grabbing her own go bag and running out the door, still in her pajamas. She got there in a record fifteen minutes and ran in the door. “I got it, go,” she told them, giving Linda and Amenadiel hugs as she shooed them out the door. 

Once they were gone, she went upstairs and looked in on Samael to see him sleeping like the little angel he was before she went downstairs to get a few more hours on the couch. She woke up a few hours later to the sound of Samael calling out for Amenadiel and Linda, so she dragged herself off the couch and headed upstairs, picking him up over the baby gate rather than trying to unlock it in her half asleep state. “Where Linda and Amen’diel?” Samael asked curiously as she carried him downstairs. 

“They had to go to the hospital. The baby is being born,” Ella told him. “I’m gonna hang out here with you until they get home.” 

“Oh. Kay,” Samael said as she sat him in his booster seat at the table. “When we see baby?” 

“I’ll call after breakfast and see how it’s going. Once he’s born, I’m sure they won’t mind if I take you up there to meet him,” Ella said as she pulled out a box of cereal and milk and poured them both some. 

The baby didn’t end up being born until a little after noon, so Ella waited until Samael woke up from his nap to take him to the hospital. When they got into the room Amenadiel was holding the baby and walking around but he grinned when he saw Samael and sat down on the little couch as the toddler rushed over and climbed up to see. “Samael, meet Charlie Lucius Martin,” Amenadiel said. 

Ella covered her gasp as her eyes filled with tears at the name. “For Charlotte and Lucifer?” she asked Linda who nodded with a smile. 

“Wow. He’s so tiny,” Samael said in awe, reaching out to touch the baby gently. Amenadiel pulled Samael into his lap and moved so that Samael was partially holding him, with Amenadiel’s arms supporting them both. 

Ella immediately grabbed her phone and started snapping pictures. “Send me all of them,” Linda all but ordered. Ella chuckled and nodded. They would be added to the hundreds of pictures of Samael everyone already had.


	12. Chapter 12

Charlie was born in May and they had given Samael a birthday in July, just to make sure that they didn’t end up sharing the same special day. Thus, Charlie was two months old when Samael had his fourth birthday party. Michael, Gabriel, and Azrael all showed up to celebrate, along with Linda, Amenadiel, Ella, Dan, and Trixie. There was a bit of a stall to things when Ella recognized Azrael and all but dragged her outside to get to the bottom of that, but otherwise things went well, and the only people not in the know, stayed not in the know. The angels stuck around after everyone else left though and they all took Samael flying after the party. 

Michael and Gabriel continued to come down for a few hours once a week or so, not usually on the same day so as not to arouse suspicion. Azrael had a much more difficult time finding free time to come by, but she still came on the two days a year they all gathered. The birthdays of the boys. She made time for that. Not long after his birthday was the start of nursery school for Samael who threw a tantrum over the idea. “You want me to go away cuz you love the baby more!” he accused. 

“No sweetie,” Linda assured him. “I love you both very much, but you have to learn and this way you can meet other kids and make friends your own age.” 

“I learn here,” Samael argued. Eventually they just had to put their feet down on the matter, and hope that Samael would come to understand. 

Nursery school went well, but as he got older, it was more and more difficult for him. By the time he was in second grade he was acting out almost non-stop. It took some time and conversations before it came out that he was bored to tears. “I should have expected this,” Amenadiel said with a sigh. 

“How so?” Linda asked. 

“He’s not human. His mind processes things at a much faster rate. He learns exponentially faster than the other kids and keeping him in class with them is just holding him back,” Amenadiel explained. He was already reading on what would be a high school level, and higher in some respects. 

“Okay, but what about the social skills,” Linda pointed out. 

“Why don’t we start home-schooling him. I can look after both boys and Samael is like a sponge anyway so I won’t need to do much to teach him. As far as social skills…I don’t know. Sports and martial arts would be a problem because of his strength and stamina, and anything academic would still bore him. Remember though, that Samael didn’t really have any social interaction with anyone but siblings last time around either and he didn’t turn out so bad.”

“That’s true,” Linda admitted. “And in a few years he can join a school band. I’m sure they’ll let him even if he’s not attending. I know he’s been taking piano lessons for a few years already, but that’s more of a solitary activity.” 

“That’s a good idea. I’ll talk to the school tomorrow and pull him out and in a few years we’ll look into other instruments he can pick up,” Amenadiel agreed. They had started the piano lessons when Samael turned five since it was something that his grown self enjoyed so much, and he loved it just as much and was something of a prodigy. They wondered if some part of him still remembered how to play or if he was just that talented. Since the part of him that would have remembered was completely separate and Lucifer had been a bit of a prodigy himself, they decided to just chalk it up to talent. Unlike Lucifer, Samael could at least read music though. 

Samael and Charlie tended to fight like brothers from time to time, since that’s what they were being raised as, but most of the time they were thick as thieves. The one and only fight Lucifer ever got into was when an older bully had pushed Charlie at the park. Thankfully, Amenadiel had been working with him in martial arts, and teaching him to use human strength and Samael remembered to do so in the heat of the moment. 

Charlie had the same problem with school that Lucifer did, so Amenadiel home-schooled both boys. Charlie’s talent lied in art rather than music, though, so he did have specialized art lessons just like Samael’s music lessons and were usually done at the same time to make things easier. The art teacher definitely liked the background music during her lessons anyway. Samael had no problem holding himself back academically for Charlie to catch up once he started learning, though Samael never stopped reading of course. 

By the time Samael was old enough to join the school band and they found one to take him, both boys were well into college level in maths and sciences, spoke dozens of languages fluently, learning roughly one per month, and still reading everything in sight. Samael chose the saxophone for his instrument for band, but soon realized that his quick learning translated to that as well and he changed instruments every two months when one of them got boring. 

Knowing Lucifer’s proclivities, Amenadiel was taking no chances and the moment he saw Samael starting to notice girls, he immediately sat him down for the sex talk. Other than the mechanics it involved the topic of consent, despite the fact that Amenadiel knew it wouldn’t be necessary. Samael was a being of desire. It was in his very nature. If someone didn’t desire it, he wouldn’t…couldn’t…push the matter. It was still an important enough subject that it needed to be said though. 

When Samael was caught messing around with older girls, and a few boys, Amenadiel had a conversation with him about the legal issues regarding age. He knew better than to try and put a stop to it completely. That would never work, but he could at least keep anyone out of jail. Samael took the warnings seriously thankfully, not wanting anyone to be hurt over something so pleasurable either, and Amenadiel and Linda were both just glad they didn’t have to worry about him getting any diseases or getting anyone pregnant. The only reason Amenadiel had been able to conceive Charlie is because he had been falling and close enough to human for their biology to be compatible. 

That didn’t stop the accusation though when Samael was sixteen of a seventeen year old pregnant girl’s father claiming that Samael had gotten her pregnant. Amenadiel explained that Samael was sterile and had been since birth, so it wasn’t possible. It wasn’t until a paternity test proved someone else was the father that they believed it. Amenadiel was glad that it hadn’t come to getting Samael tested, since he couldn’t allow that. Non-human DNA couldn’t hit the system. 

Once Samael turned eighteen and had access to all of his old money and belongings, he immediately split the cash with Charlie, thinking that it wasn’t fair that he got so much and Charlie didn’t have any. Linda and Amenadiel put their collective feet down on the fourteen year old accessing it right away though. He could have it when he was eighteen just like Samael. Samael moved into the penthouse above Lux, thinking it was totally awesome and he spent most nights in the club. He was definitely following in his own footsteps in many ways, but was far more happy and emotionally stable. He did have many lovers, but also had no problems with putting them all on hold for relationships when he felt an actual connection with someone. 

When Samael was almost thirty, Linda was diagnosed with cancer, and both Amenadiel, who had married her not long after Charlie was born, and both the boys were inconsolable. Gabriel came to the rescue though and brought them a glowing golden orb. “How did you get that?” Amenadiel asked in shock. 

“Snuck it out when Dad wasn’t looking,” Gabriel grinned. 

“What is it?” Samael and Charlie both asked. 

“It will make your mother into a celestial,” Amenadiel told them. “But Dad…”

“You know how he is about hands off,” Gabriel reminded him. “As long as humans stay in the dark, he’ll rant and rave, but won’t do anything.” 

“What will he do to you though?” Amenadiel asked worriedly. 

“Don’t know. If he finds out, probably banish me too. Good thing I know some people down here to help me get settled, huh?” Gabriel smirked. Michael, Azrael, and himself had all agreed long ago that being banished wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Their father had lost their respect the moment he advocated for tossing a baby into Hell. 

“Gabriel…thank you,” Amenadiel said relieved and went to have a conversation with Linda about whether or not she would accept the gift. Eventually she agreed and there was a flash of light from the room that made Samael, Charlie, and Gabriel all grin. Gabriel took off rather quickly though, leaving the orb in case there was anyone else they wanted to add to the club. He knew that Amenadiel would be responsible about it at least. 

“I call teaching her to fly!” Samael said loudly. 

“No fair!” Charlie pouted. 

“We can all teach her to fly,” Amenadiel quickly defused the argument as he stepped out. “She’s resting now, but you can both see her tomorrow and we’ll talk more about it then.” 

Gabriel joined them among the banished almost a year later when his father discovered what he’d done, but he just laughed it off. He was grateful for the large chunk of money that his family gave him to get settled though. 

Over the next hundred and fifty years, Samael and Charlie both fell in love more than once, and Samael was married twice, once to a woman and once to a man, staying with both of them until the end of their human life. Charlie married once, staying with her until she died as well, but neither of them had fallen hard enough to commit to eternity. Amenadiel still had the orb though in case it was ever needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter covered a lot, but I was impatient to get to the return of Lucifer in the next chapter. I wouldn't rule out adding some outtakes of the skipped time at some point though, so if you want to see something in particular, feel free to drop me a comment about it and I'll put it on the list.


	13. Chapter 13

Chloe’s eyes snapped open and she took a deep breath as she looked around, finding herself young again and in an elevator that had long haunted her dreams and nightmares. It opened into the penthouse she would never be able to forget and she knew immediately that she was in Hell. She remembered the shiv entering her back and the blinding pain and then this. She was unable to stop herself as she poured the sedative into Lucifer’s wine, able to see now what she had been willfully blind to back then. The complete love and trust he had in her. The soul-deep hope that they could have something real. It was quickly taken over by the horrific look of betrayal before he slumped over. She was unable to stop herself from participating in that horrible ritual, and then she was back in the elevator. Maybe it stopped there because she didn’t feel guilty about anything that happened after that. Shooting the priest and taking the fall. It had been the right thing to do. 

Chloe lost count of how many times she had poisoned the man she loved, even now, when the person in question suddenly appeared behind her. “So the great betrayer has finally arrived,” he said coldly as the scene paused. 

Chloe spun to look at him and gasped. It was Lucifer, no doubt about it, but not the one she remembered. He hadn’t changed physically, but he had a coldness to his eyes and a rigidity to his stance that was foreign to her. “I’m sorry, Lucifer. I’m so so sorry…”

She was cut off by a hand around her throat. “I. Don’t. Care,” he said coldly. “Apologies are meaningless. Especially here. Besides, you did me a favor in the end. You rid me of the troublesome emotions that had been holding me back for so long. You proved that even the best of humanity was worthless. That doesn’t mean you won’t suffer for your betrayal though,” he snarled. 

Chloe soon realized that breathing obviously wasn’t necessary here because she would have lost consciousness long before he threw her across the room and she crashed through the glass doors of the balcony. “Lucifer…please…go back,” she croaked out, massaging her throat. “Don’t…don’t let me take away everything good in you…please…” 

“Goodbye, detective. You won’t see me again. I just wanted to welcome you to Hell,” Lucifer smirked cruelly before he disappeared and she found herself back in the elevator again. 

Maze followed Lucifer around with a wince as his temper got the best of him…again. As it so often seemed to since their time on Earth. Since he had literally been split in two. She had never considered herself an emotional being. She really wasn’t. She was a demon. But apparently even demons needed a pat on the head every once in a while. The little bit of affection she had always received from him before had been quite absent the last few thousand years. It was only her steadfast loyalty that kept her by his side. That and the fact that she would be unlikely to survive if she tried to leave. The best she could hope for was being banished to the wastelands which was like the Hell of Hell. The place everyone feared to go. 

She watched the demons scatter as he stalked down the corridors, and wished that she could be one of them. They were terrified of their king these days. After all, they were the embodiment of evil and Lucifer punished evil. Not even Maze was exempt from that, but at least she only got it when he was in the mood and no one else could be easily caught. She quickly grabbed a demon that wasn’t quite fast enough to escape her and shoved him towards Lucifer. She wasn’t going to end up on the rack again. Not this time. 

Eventually, Maze couldn’t take anymore and took a chance. One that might see her killed, but maybe she could talk her way around it. “Why don’t we head back up to Earth for a while?” she suggested. “It’s been a long time since we partied and I’m sure there’s so much wickedness up there that we can play with.” 

She considered herself lucky with Lucifer didn’t snap at the suggestion but just looked thoughtful for a moment. “That is true,” he admitted. “And plenty of people to tempt those dark desires from. It has been quite a long time…what…two hundred earth years?” 

“Yes, my lord,” Maze agreed, trying to keep the relief out of her voice. Step one, get him back to Earth. Step two, find that other part of him and shove them back together at any cost. She didn’t even care if she was killed for it anymore. It would still be better than this. 

“Very well. Make the preparations for our absence,” Lucifer said, waving his hand in dismissal, and she rushed away to do just that. When they left a day later, there was a party in Hell for the first time in it’s existence. The demons learned what it was like to feel joy and relief. There was zero chance of any of them breaking any rules that might see their king return sooner. 

Maze fell to her knees on the beach alone as Lucifer disappeared and she considered her options for a long moment. She could make a run for it. Abandon the entire plan. She knew she couldn’t run forever though. Eventually he would find her and make her regret it. No, best to keep to the plan and make it seem like she was looking for him. She headed towards the city to start her search. 

Lucifer screamed in agony the moment he reached the Earthly plane as it felt like he was being ripped in two. He wasn’t even conscious enough to realize that he had lost Maze and that he wasn’t on that beach anymore. All he knew was that once the pain had lessened enough for him to think around it, he found himself in a dark empty space, staring at someone who looked just like him. “Lucifer, I presume?” the other person asked. 

“Michael?” he asked confused and irritated. 

The other person laughed. “No. Samael. Good guess though.” 

Lucifer snapped his hand to Samael’s throat. “You dare make fun of me?” 

Samael shook his head in amusement. “You really think you can hurt me here? Besides which, I’m not evil and I’m not threatening you in any way, beyond of course, just existing, so I know you won’t hurt me even if you could.”

Lucifer dropped his arm with a snarl. “Where are we? What have you done to me?” 

“/I/ haven’t done anything. You did this. Once I got a better understanding of what happened with us all those years ago, I wondered what would happen if you ever returned to this plane. This was one of my theories, so I’m glad to see I wasn’t completely off base.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Lucifer snapped. 

“As to where we are, my best guess is my mindscape. Or yours. Or both,” Samael told him before closing his eyes and turning it into a perfect replica of the penthouse including all his new furniture rather than the old stuff that Lucifer had there. “Well I suppose that proves that it is mine, but doesn’t rule out it being both of ours.”

Lucifer narrowed his eyes as he looked around, easily recognizing the surroundings but changing the furniture back to his before getting a smug look on his face. “Looks like we both have control here.” 

“So it seems,” Samael said. “I guess now we just need to decide where to go from here.” 

“What do you mean where to go? I’m leaving here and going about my business.”

“See if you could do that, why haven’t you already?” Samael asked as he sat down in the Italian leather chair. When he saw a look of consternation turn to almost fear, he said, “Would you like to know what I think happened so we can find a solution?” 

“What could you know? You’re barely more than a child,” Lucifer snapped. 

“True. Compared to you, I am, but while you were off playing king of Hell, I was studying and learning everything I could. I knew what happened between us all those years ago. How we were split apart. I knew that this was always a possibility and wanted to be prepared.”

“Of course. Father turned you into a perfect little scholar this time around did he?” Lucifer sneered. 

Samael’s expression turned nearly as hard as Lucifer’s. “/Father/ hasn’t given me the time of day. Even as a baby he refused to let me back into heaven. Linda and Amenadiel raised me, and I’m definitely not a perfect little scholar. I party most every night, get lots of sex, play music, and have more than enough fun. I just also happen to read and think in my downtime.” 

“If you have downtime you’re not doing it right,” Lucifer said in almost amusement. 

Samael laughed at that. “Somehow I expected you to say that from the stories I’ve heard. So now that we’re done posturing, you want to hear my theory or not?” 

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Lucifer said as he sat down on the couch in annoyance. 

“Thank you,” Samael said. “Now what I’m guessing is that when you crossed into this plane the two parts of us couldn’t coexist separately so you were dragged into my head. Or I was dragged into yours. Not sure which, but I hope it’s mine since I was comfortably in bed and who knows where you where.” 

“On a beach,” Lucifer told him. 

“Yeah, definitely hope it’s mine then. Otherwise once this is over we might end up waking up in a hospital and that’s more than a little annoying,” Samael said.

“Get on with it,” Lucifer snapped impatiently. 

“Right. Anyway. We’re stuck together. My guess is that we can either remerge together, or be stuck as two distinct personalities. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde so to speak. Or, I suppose, one of us could kill the other and take over completely, but there’s no telling what kind of damage that could end up doing to the survivor if it doesn’t just end up making us both brain dead anyway.”


	14. Chapter 14

Charlie headed up to his pseudo-brother’s penthouse. He’d missed their planned lunch and Charlie was a little worried. If Samael said he was going to be somewhere then he was there. No matter what. He didn’t break his promises, ever. When he found Samael twisting and turning in his sleep, his frown deepened and he went over to wake him up. Once he got close enough he could hear muttering in two different voices…or at least two different accents anyway, and when he wouldn’t wake up, he had a decent idea of what was happening. Charlie immediately pressed the device on his wrist and said, “Call Mom.” 

It was a moment before her holographic image appeared. “What’s wrong Charlie? I thought you and Samael were having lunch today?” 

“I think you need to get over to the penthouse. Samael won’t wake up and I think Lucifer might be back,” Charlie told her. 

“I’m on my way,” she said as her image disappeared. She knew that if he wouldn’t wake up there wasn’t much of anything she could do, but when he did eventually wake up, /if/ he woke up, not that she wanted to consider that possibility, she would need to be there. No matter the outcome, whoever woke up would need her. She called Amenadiel on the way to meet her there, but left Michael and Gabriel out of the loop for the time being. Until they had confirmation of what was going on and knew who would wake up, it was best not to worry them. 

Linda arrived a few minutes after Amenadiel whose wings were still faster than her car and Amenadiel nodded gravely at her. “It’s definitely Lucifer and Samael. They seem to be arguing, but I can’t make out most of the words.” He could barely make out enough to hear the British accent in part of the conversation. That was something that Samael had never picked up. 

“Come on. There’s nothing we can do until one or both of them wake up,” Linda told them. “While we’re waiting we may as well make some lunch.” 

Meanwhile in Samael/Lucifer’s head:

“You can’t honestly expect me to remerge with you and your weaknesses,” Lucifer sneered. 

“Excuse me? I think I’m the one who should be complaining here. You really think I want all those memories of Hell?” Samael returned with a raise of his eyebrow. 

“Not to mention being thrown out by your family,” Lucifer taunted. 

“Oh I’ve got that,” Samael said with a roll of his eyes. “As a three year old with no memory or understanding of why even.” 

“Point,” Lucifer reluctantly admitted that in that one area, the kid had it worse. 

“If anything, that will be a relief to finally understand why. No one ever wanted to give me the details.”

“Probably trying to protect the little baby.”

“Probably,” Samael admitted. “But they never wanted me, you know.” 

“My brother mistreated you?” Lucifer asked, almost gently, narrowing his eyes. 

“No. Nothing like that. They were always great to me, but I was always nothing more than a replacement for you. They wanted you back. Not me,” Samael told him. 

Lucifer scoffed. “Please. They had everything they wanted. All the good parts to remold as they wished.” 

“And yet, they always talked about how much they missed you,” Samael told him. 

“They told you that?” Lucifer asked suspiciously. 

“No. Not exactly,” Samael said. “But people talk a lot when they don’t think the child in the room is paying attention. Even after I grew up, I would overhear things often.” 

“So you want to make them happy by becoming me again?” Lucifer guessed in irritation. 

“No, I just don’t want to end up with a split personality fighting for control of my own body,” Samael told him. “And after how long you’ve spent in Hell with demons, I don’t like my chances of winning of a fight. Of the options, remerging is the best choice.” 

“You do realize that as the elder, I will most likely end up the dominant, yes?” Lucifer pointed out, unable to believe that he was even considering this, but he also knew that it was likely the best option. That didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to think of another way. He knew that the kid was probably right and a fight to the death might destroy them both, and how much he would be able to be in the forefront with a dual personality would depend a great deal on whose body they were in, and he would still end up being locked away at least some of the time. 

“I know,” Samael sighed. “But I’ll still be here. As part of you. Just like it was always supposed to be.” 

“And you’re willing to make that sacrifice?” Lucifer said derisively. “Essentially die so I go on?” 

“If that’s how you want to see it, then yes,” Samael told him. “I prefer to think of it as putting things back where they belong.” 

“You’re rather blithe about the end of your existence,” Lucifer said suspiciously, wondering if he had something up his sleeve. 

“It was never mine to begin with was it?” Samael said bitterly. “I was always just a placeholder for you. There’s no point fighting it.” 

“I see,” Lucifer said steepling his fingers as he thought. He didn’t see that he had much of a choice now, unfortunately. Surely it couldn’t be as bad as before though. He had so long without the weakness of emotions, it couldn’t be as difficult to lock them away as it used to be. “Very well. Do you have any ideas on how to do this?” 

Samael reached out his hand to Lucifer as he said, “I figure if we just will it to happen that should do it.” Lucifer looked skeptical, but took his hand, and they both tensed up as the felt like they were being ripped in two different directions. 

Meanwhile in the penthouse:

Maze came up the elevator, noticing the minor differences and hoping that this Samael Morningstar wasn’t some simpering weakling. She stepped out into the penthouse, blades at the ready, just in case, but stopped short at the sight that met her. “L-Linda?! How…how are you still…” About that time Amenadiel and another man came out of the kitchen and her eyes widened further. 

“Maze!?” Amenadiel asked in shock. “What are you doing here?” 

Linda chuckled and shook her head. “I think we all have a bit of catching up to do while we wait.”

“Wait for what?” Maze asked, tensely, not understanding the current situation and not liking it. 

“Apparently, Lucifer and Samael are currently fighting for control of their body,” Linda said, trying to keep the worry out of her voice. 

“They’re not going to…I don’t know…become one again?” Maze asked worriedly. 

“We don’t know,” Amenadiel told her. “You want them to?” he asked incredulously, having picked that up from her tone. 

“You guys have no idea what it was like with him like that,” she said defensively. “It was horrible. Every demon in Hell lives in terror, even me. That’s why I convinced him to come up here. To try and find a way to put them back together. Now that’s settled. Explain. How is Linda still alive and who’s he?” she asked pointing at Charlie. 

“That’s mine and Amenadiel’s son, Charlie, and I’m still alive because I’m an angel now. It’s kind of a long story, but when I got sick, none of the boys wanted me to die, so they found a way to make me an angel so I could live forever with them.” 

“You have a son?” she asked. “And you’re an angel?” 

“It’s great to finally meet you,” Charlie jumped in. “I’ve heard so much about you. Lucifer too.” 

Maze looked him up and down, seeing the hints of both Linda and Amenadiel in him before nodding. “You too, kid.”

“It is great to see you again, Maze,” Linda said pulling her into a tight hug and she was surprised to find Maze actually returning it. 

Maze relaxed a great deal at the hug. She would never have considered the possibility of being starved for affection before. She was a demon, after all. It turned out that it was possible though. She even returned Amenadiel’s and Charlie’s hugs before she said. “Well now that we’re all caught up, I’m gonna make myself scarce until…whatever that is,” she motioned to the bedroom, “is finished. Depending on who wakes up, I’m gonna want to be far away.” 

“Hang on. Before you go,” Amenadiel said, pulling the device from his wrist and handing it to her. “Hold onto that for a while so we can call you when it’s safe to come back. If you’re staying we’ll get you one of your own.” 

“What is this?” Maze asked turning it over in her hand before snapping it on her wrist. 

“It’s…complicated. Think of it like a phone for now, though it does a lot of other things too. Just press the button there and say ‘call Linda’ or ‘call Charlie’ and it’ll get us,” Linda explained. 

“What’s a phone?” Charlie asked jokingly, making everyone else laugh. He remembered phones. Vaguely. They hadn’t been used since he was a little kid and he’d never had one of his own. He’d seen a lot of them in museums though.


	15. Chapter 15

Lucifer groaned and turned his head only to hear what sounded like a stampede headed right for him. He was in too much pain to even care though. His head felt like it had been through a meat grinder and his memory was all fuzzy. Was this what humans experienced when they had a hangover? If so why would they ever drink at all? He heard Linda’s voice say, “Everyone out. Give us a little bit first.” Then two sets of the footsteps left and he started to creak his eyes open. 

“Doctor Linda?” he asked in confusion. 

Linda heard the accent combined with the title that only Lucifer called her, and knew who she was dealing with. “Lucifer. Welcome back. How are you feeling?” 

“Oh just peachy thanks,” he said with a wince. That was a stupid question if he ever heard one. “What the bloody hell happened?” 

“That’s kind of a long story. What do you remember?” she asked. 

Lucifer struggled to sit up in the bed and she reached over to help him. Once he was upright, he couldn’t help but lean over and put his throbbing head in his hands. “Most of it is cloudy. I can’t focus on anything.” 

“Okay. I would imagine that’s normal, not that any of this could be considered normal,” she chuckled. “What’s the last thing you remember clearly?” 

“The detective and I were…the wine was…” Lucifer couldn’t even get the words out. The emotions were threatening to tear him apart, so he just skipped that part. “Then I was talking to what seemed like another version of me. He called himself Samael. Talking about remerging and how he was never wanted and only a placeholder for me and…most of it doesn’t make much sense.” 

Linda covered her gasp as tears filled her eyes at the knowledge of what her baby thought. “He really thought that?” she asked heartbrokenly. “We loved him, just as much as we love you.” 

“Then he was real? But how…what…” Lucifer said confused. 

“Right. I need to fill in some of those blanks for you I suppose,” Linda said, pushing back her heartache for the moment. “Chloe put a sedative in your wine and then she and a priest did a ritual to banish the devil back to Hell. It send part of you back, but left behind the three year old angel Samael. With him was all of your emotions, your innocence, your kindness and compassion. Amenadiel tried to fix it then, but the part of you that was left in Hell refused to return. You said that it was all of your weakness that was removed and you didn’t want it back.”

“And he just let it go at that? The boy I spoke to was much older than three,” Lucifer told him. 

“He didn’t want to, but you gave him no choice. Said that you would use the armies of Hell to stop him if he tried to take you by force and threatened to kill him if he ever stepped foot in Hell again,” Linda told him. 

“And he believed me?” Lucifer said, a little hurt by that. Like he would ever kill his own brother unless his hand was literally forced. 

“The whole and complete you would never have done it and we all know that, but what was left of you after that ritual…”

“How bad was it?” Lucifer asked worriedly, finally realizing what he could be without the things he lost. 

“I don’t know, really. None of us ever saw you again until now. Maze went back with you though, so she could tell you.”

“Where is Maze? I would assume I brought her to Earth with me again?” 

“She’s…out,” Linda said hesitantly. 

Lucifer winced. He got what she wasn’t saying. Maze was fleeing. From him. How bad must he have been if Mazikeen of all people was that frightened. He decided to change the subject. “Then you were left with a three year old angel…and what? Why didn’t you send him back to heaven? It couldn’t have been easy to raise him here on Earth.” 

Linda sighed, she hated telling him this, but she knew he would find out sooner or later and blame her for not telling him. “Your father refused to let him back and ordered Amenadiel home.” 

“But then…”

“He suggested that either Chloe or I raise the angel baby since we knew about the divine…”

“You could never have known what to do with him. His wings, teaching him to fly, using his powers…”

“Which is why your father’s other suggestion was to send the baby to Hell for you to raise…” Linda told him with a wince. 

“He what?!” Lucifer roared, standing up, before crying out in pain and falling back down. Linda caught him before he could end up prone though so he returned to sitting. “I would have killed them all for that. To send a baby to Hell of all places…” he growled. 

“We know. And we never would have allowed that to happen. Even if it came to me raising him alone, I would have done the best I could. It didn’t come to that though. Amenadiel walked out and took banishment for himself and our son rather than let that happen,” Linda told him. 

“He said that you and Amenadiel raised him, but your son? And how have you not aged a day? He had to have been at least twenty,” Lucifer said getting more and more confused. 

“I had just found out I was pregnant when everything happened to you. Amenadiel had apparently fallen far enough for that to happen. As far as my not aging…I did. For a long time. Before I died though, I was turned into an angel as well.”

“Why would father…”

“He didn’t. Your father’s desire to have the baby sent to Hell was the last straw for some of your other brothers and one of them stole an orb,” Linda told him. 

“Figures. Soon as all the bad parts are gone, they suddenly want to be part of my…his…life again,” Lucifer scoffed, more than a little hurt by that.

“I can see why you feel that way, but that wasn’t it. We talked a lot about that, and I actually accused them of the same thing, but it turned out that they were just afraid of what your father would do if they stuck by you. I’m not saying it was right, or anything, but it wasn’t that they didn’t care before. They both said that they wished they’d had a chance to make things right when you were still with us.” 

“Right. Like I’m supposed to believe that.”

“I’m not asking you to believe it,” she told him. “That will come in time. They have to earn back your trust the hard way and they knew it would come to that if you returned.” 

“Why can’t I remember?” he asked worriedly, hating how childlike that question sounded. 

“You said it’s there it’s just all cloudy, right?” Lucifer nodded. “Then I think it will come back. Your mind probably can’t process all the memories from both sides right now. Things will get clearer. I’m sure of it,” she assured him. 

“I need a drink,” he muttered miserably. 

Linda chuckled. “There’s the Lucifer we all know and love. I’ll be right back with one.” She got up and went out to the living room to find Amenadiel already had one ready and she took it and headed back into the bedroom to hand it to him. 

Lucifer took a long drink before speaking again. “It’s good. Not one I’ve ever tried before though…”

“A lot has changed in the last two hundred years,” Linda told him. “Samael always did have good taste in booze though. Not that we were surprised by that in the slightest.” 

“Two hundred years. That would have been thousands of years in Hell…” Lucifer breathed out.

“No wonder your mind isn’t processing right now,” Linda said sympathetically. “We should let you rest, but first do you want to see Amenadiel for a moment? He’s missed you most of all.”

“I suppose if I must,” Lucifer said with mock-weariness, but Linda could see right through him. 

She went out and sent Amenadiel in, and Charlie asked immediately, “Samael?” 

“His memories and everything are still there, but it’s going to take Lucifer some time to process them,” Linda told him and Charlie sighed sadly. 

Amenadiel stepped into the room, and Lucifer pulled himself to his feet with some effort. “Brother…” Lucifer started gently, not sure where to begin. 

He didn’t need to though. He was pulled into a tight hug before anything else could be said. “We’re good Luci.”

Lucifer hugged him back gratefully, glad that his apparent temper after everything happened hadn’t cost him the only brother that cared. “I’m sorry about Samael,” he still said. 

Amenadiel stepped back and put a hand over Lucifer’s heart. “He’s a part of you again, brother. Back where he was meant to be. Now we have you both back.”


	16. Chapter 16

When Lucifer staggered a bit, Amenadiel reached out to steady him and helped him into bed. “You should get some sleep. We’ll be here when you wake up. I’m sure you’ll have more questions.” Lucifer just nodded and closed his eyes, the pain and exhaustion quickly dragging him under. 

Amenadiel went back out to the living room to find Linda and Charlie sitting on the couch and he went to sit next to them. “He’s sleeping now,” Amenadiel told them. 

“Most of the work of processing the memories will probably be done while he’s asleep,” Linda said with a nod. 

“Does that mean that when he wakes up he’ll have Sammy’s memories too?” Charlie asked hopefully. 

“I don’t know,” Linda told him. “There is a lot there to go through. There’s two hundred years here on Earth plus the thousands of years in Hell, it’s going to take time, baby.” 

Charlie nodded sadly. “I know. I just…I feel like I’m losing my brother.” 

Amenadiel put his arm around Charlie and pulled him close. “You’re not. Samael is still there. He’s just a part of Lucifer again, just like he was always meant to be. He’ll remember growing up with you and everything you were to each other. I can’t say it won’t be different, but he’s still there.”

Linda was not happy about the blasé way that Amenadiel was taking this and decided to let him on something that Lucifer had let slip. “Do you know that Samael apparently felt like we didn’t want him? That we were just keeping him to wait for Lucifer to come back?” 

“Yeah,” Charlie said at the same time as Amenadiel said aghast, “What?” 

They both turned to look at Charlie. “You knew?” Linda asked hurt.

“Of course. He was my brother. We told each other everything.” 

“And you didn’t think that we should know that little fact?” Amenadiel asked sternly. 

“Maybe, but he asked me not to tell. Made me promise. I couldn’t break it,” Charlie told them, long past the stage of being intimidated by his parents. 

Neither of his parents could argue with that anyway. Samael was honest to a fault and expected honesty in return. Breaking a promise to him meant breaking his trust completely and there was a good chance you’d never get it back. “Still…I wish we had known…for him to think we didn’t love him…”

“Oh, he knows that you did,” Charlie assured her. “He never doubted that much. But he also knew that he wasn’t complete. Even without your stories and all, the older he got the more he felt like something was missing. Why do you think he never even considered committing to anyone for longer than their lifetime?”

“Because he didn’t want his whole self to reject them later,” Linda realized. “Why didn’t we see that?” 

“Because you didn’t want to,” Charlie said bluntly. “You molded him to be as much like his other self as he could be. The piano lessons, the martial arts, keeping the club and the penthouse for him, not taking him to task for the sex and the partying like you did me for a while…”

“He thought…” Amenadiel gasped with wide eyes. 

“If he had said that he didn’t like those things we would have done something different,” Linda said with tears in her eyes. 

“He knew that,” Charlie told them. “And he did like those things. He had no complaints about that part. Just that it seemed like his path was pre-ordained or something and everyone expected him to follow it.” 

“But he did,” Amenadiel said confused. “Lucifer would have…”

“Rebelled?” Charlie finished with a snort. “Look where that got him last time.” He knew that he was being harsh with his parents, but they needed to understand all this. Now more than ever. Because whatever combination of Lucifer and Samael they finished with, it would come up eventually. “Besides, he knew that it was coming from a good place. You wanted him to be happy and you gave him the roadmap that his previous self-followed to get him there. As long as he was happy with it, there was no reason for him to fight it. It wasn’t like you were making him into something that he wasn’t. You were showing him who he was. He knew that it would make this day easier.” 

“Why are you telling us this now? When it’s too late?” Amenadiel asked sadly. 

“Because it’s not. My promise was released when this happened, because he wanted me to be able to tell you that he’s happy. He’s wanted this part of himself back ever since it split. More so as he’s gotten old enough to feel it missing. It wasn’t /you/ who made him feel like he wasn’t whole.”

Linda couldn’t help but smile at that and leaned against Charlie’s other side, wrapping her arm around his as she kissed his temple. “You’re a good boy, Charlie, and a good brother. He’ll remember that. Don’t worry.” 

“We should call Maze and let her know it’s safe to come back,” Amenadiel suggested. 

Linda nodded and pressed the button on her wrist. “Call Amenadiel.”

“Whoa this is freaky,” Maze said as the hologram of Linda came up. 

Linda laughed. “I guess it can be if you’re not used to it. I just wanted to let you know that it’s safe to come back,” she told her. “Lucifer woke up a little while ago and he’s back to himself.”

“Like the old self? With his feelings back and everything?” Maze asked to be sure. 

“Yeah. He doesn’t really remember anything since the split yet, but he already feels bad for what he must have done.”

“But those memories will be coming back?” 

“Yeah. It’ll take time though,” Linda told her. 

“Then I think I’ll stay disappeared until then. Just to be sure he’s still the same after. You understand, I’m sure. I’ll scrounge up some money to buy myself one of these thingys and mail Amenadiel’s back to the penthouse if it’s gonna be more than a few days.” 

“I don’t know how long it will be yet, but one of us can meet you with some money and make an exchange,” Linda offered. 

Maze considered that for a moment before nodding. “Okay. The bus station?” 

“I’ll be there soon,” Linda promised and they hung up. “I should be back before he wakes up. I’ll grab some dinner while I’m gone.”

“Italian,” Amenadiel suggested. “That was always Lucifer’s favorite.” 

“Okay. You want to move some more money over to the spare account while I’m headed that way and I’ll give that chip to Maze?” Amenadiel agreed and Linda left. Her first stop was to a store to buy a new mobile to trade for Amenadiel’s and she quickly programmed all their codes in and made sure to keep the instruction book for Maze to figure it out. She knew that her old friend was smart enough as long as she had that. 

When she got to the bus station, she handed over the device, the book, and the chip. “What’s this?” Maze asked turning the little chip over in her hand. 

“That’s what we use in place of debit cards now. I also got you a few thousand in cash,” she said, pulling a wad out of her purse. “You should have plenty to get you through for a while.” 

“Thanks Linda,” Maze said hugging her tightly before handing back Amenadiel’s wristband. 

“Anytime, Maze. I’ll call you when everything is settled okay?” Maze agreed and headed for the counter to get a bus ticket, so Linda headed back to the penthouse, stopping at the new Italian restaurant on the way, glad to find that Amenadiel had already placed the order so she didn’t have to wait for it. 

Once she got back, she headed back upstairs, gave Amenadiel back his mobile and they all went into the kitchen to eat so they didn’t wake Lucifer. Linda set his food in the oven to keep it warm. When Lucifer still hadn’t woken up a few hours later, they all went to bed. Charlie had a room over here, just like Samael had a room at Charlie’s house, but Charlie let his parents take that for the night and he slept on the plush slate grey couch.


	17. Chapter 17

Lucifer woke to complete darkness and slowly sat up. His head felt a lot better, but still not great. At least he could move around now. And he was more than a little hungry. He got up and headed out of the bedroom, easily navigating the stairs in the dark, but he didn’t realize that the furniture configuration was different and walked straight into the back of the chair. Between his exclamation and the chair scraping across the floor that was enough to wake up Charlie who muttered, “Light,” as he sat up and the lamp next to the couch came on. 

“You must be Charlie,” Lucifer said with a nod. “Apologies for waking you. I was simply looking for something to eat.” 

“It’s cool,” Charlie waved off the apology. “I could use a midnight snack myself or more like…” he looked at the clock. “A three am snack,” he finished with a chuckle. “Come on. We saved you some dinner.” 

“Thank you,” Lucifer said feeling more than a little off balance. 

“No problem,” Charlie said pulling Lucifer’s dinner out of the oven and grabbing a snack for himself. “So you don’t remember m-anything yet?” 

Lucifer dug into the food with a moan before answering Charlie’s question. “I have fragments, but nothing concrete or in any kind of order. Just flashes mostly.”

“Well I’d be happy to help fill in any blanks if I can,” Charlie told him. “I mean I couldn’t help with the Hell stuff, but I know most everything about Sammy’s life.” 

“He…I was married?” Lucifer asked curiously. One of the flashes had been of a wedding ceremony. 

“Twice actually,” Charlie told him. “Mariah and Claude. Claude passed away of old age about thirty years ago, Mariah almost a hundred years ago.” 

“So neither of them ever used the orb?” Lucifer asked confused. “Or do you not have it anymore?”

“We still have it. Dad keeps it locked up tight. Sammy wasn’t going to commit to eternity with anyone knowing that you could come back at any time and he wouldn’t be the same anymore though. Didn’t want either of you stuck with someone you might not want,” Charlie told him. 

Lucifer couldn’t really say anything to that, so he moved on. “You stood with me?” 

“Both times,” Charlie said with a grin. “Just like you stood with me the one time I was married. We were brothers and best friends.” 

“I…look forward to remembering that,” Lucifer said with a tentative smile. It would be nice having a brother that had never turned his back on him. Even as close as he and Amenadiel ended up getting, there was always that undercurrent between them. 

“Me too,” Charlie told him honestly. 

“I don’t…really feel like myself either,” Lucifer realized. “I’m not sure who I am anymore.” He was calmer. More confident and mellow than he ever remembered. 

“As far as I understand it, you’re a combination of Lucifer and Samael, now. Still mostly you, but even without Sammy’s memories, you still have parts of his personality.”

“So he wasn’t much like me then?” Lucifer asked curiously. 

“Oh no. In most ways he was a lot like you. At least according to the stories we’ve heard. Parties, sex, booze, honesty, music, etcetera. He was still an angel of desire. He just had a lot less emotional baggage and more…healthy ways of dealing with his issues,” Charlie chuckled. 

Lucifer chuckled along with him. That made sense. He felt a lot freer. More open. While he still felt the pain of the detective’s betrayal that was so fresh in his mind, it wasn’t as debilitating as he would have expected. Perhaps two hundred years of being raised by a therapist was good for something after all. The more he and Charlie talked, the more of the fragments were being filled in, but anything that he didn’t have at least that much of was still beyond his grasp. 

They ended up staying up all night and when Linda and Amenadiel joined them, they were deep into the drink and sharing stories, Charlie of his and Samael’s escapades and Lucifer of his old ones. “How long have you boys been up?” Amenadiel asked sleepily. 

“Since about three,” Charlie admitted. 

“How are you feeling, Lucifer?” Linda asked. 

“Better, but still like crap. The scotch helps,” he told her. 

Charlie knew what his mother was actually asking though, and decided to answer that for him. “He’s got flashes of memory that we’ve been filling in, but not a whole lot yet.” 

Linda nodded and instinctively pressed a kiss to each of their heads as she walked by the bar towards the kitchen. She realized once she’d done it that it was Lucifer and not Samael, but decided to just continue on as normal unless Lucifer said anything. “Any breakfast requests?” 

“Waffles,” Charlie requested, noticing the look of consternation on Lucifer’s face and answering for him to give him time to collect himself. Once Linda and Amenadiel were in the kitchen cooking, giving the boys some privacy since they seemed to be getting along so well at the moment, Charlie told Lucifer, “If it bothers you, you can tell her and she’ll stop.” 

“I don’t know…” Lucifer said honestly. It was nice to feel cared about but at the same time it wasn’t him she was so affectionate with. It was Samael. 

“It’s both of you, you know. She loves you both,” Charlie told him. 

“Huh?” Lucifer said confused at how he could know what he was thinking. 

“That was the same look Sammy always got when he was trying to figure out if they were seeing him or you,” Charlie said with a shrug. 

“I assure you, the doctor never kissed me before. Not like that anyway. There were many other ways, of course, back when we were…”

“Okay, stop. If you value my sanity at all, please never /ever/ finish that sentence,” Charlie told him. That was one story they were never told and he could have gone the rest of his existence without knowing about.

Lucifer laughed loudly as Linda came out to get them for breakfast. “What’s so funny?” she asked with a smile, glad to see him so happy. 

“I was just telling Charlie here about when we met,” Lucifer told her with a smirk. 

That definitely wiped the smile off her face and put more of a green look there. “Yeah, lets never speak of that time again.” That just made Lucifer laugh harder as they followed her back into the kitchen to eat. 

After breakfast, Linda and Amenadiel excused themselves to call Gabriel and Michael and let them know what was going on but asked them to give it some time before coming over so that Lucifer could process the memories and not see them as enemies so much. They reluctantly agreed, but unfortunately Michael’s wife had a different idea. Lucifer had just woken up from his nap when the elevator dinged and everyone turned to look at it just in time to see a brunette blur nearly tackle Lucifer in a hug. “Holy crap, I’m so glad you’re back. Not that we didn’t love Samael of course because we did…do…but I missed you so much!” 

“Ms. Lopez?” Lucifer asked in shock as he instinctively hugged her back. 

“Mrs. Morningstar now actually, but I guess you haven’t gotten that far in your memories yet…”

“You and I are…” 

“Oh! No!” Ella said with a laugh. “Sorry. No, I married your brother. He decided that since you looked the same that you should have the same last name, so he adopted it when he got booted down to earth too and then we met and ‘boom!’ The rest is history.” 

“I…see…” Lucifer said, head spinning. 

Linda chuckled and wrapped her arm around Ella’s shoulders. “We appreciate your exhuberance and all as usual, Ella, but Michael didn’t tell you we wanted to wait until his memories were a little more stable?” 

“Well, yeah. But I thought that was just for them since the last he knew they weren’t on good terms and all. Besides, I just couldn’t wait.” 

“It is nice to see you again, Ms…Ella,” Lucifer said with a smile. 

“You too, buddy,” she grinned. “We need to have words about secrets though,” she said mock-sternly, making Lucifer laugh. 

“And how exactly did you find out anyway?” Lucifer asked amusedly. “Or was my brother less careless than I was?” 

“Actually that one could be blamed on a little angel who decided that he liked flying around indoors,” Ella teased him. 

“Charlie?” Lucifer guessed, despite having a feeling that it wasn’t. 

“Nice try,” Ella laughed. “But little Samael was the culprit there. Oh the stories I could tell about that child…” And she proceeded to do just that as she joined them for the rest of the afternoon and dinner, not leaving until Lucifer was ready for bed. 

Lucifer ended up taking a nap for many days following. Linda, Amenadiel, and Charlie stayed with him for almost three weeks so they could be close by to talk him through the new memories and help rebuild them before he had most everything. There were probably a few minor things still missing, but everything significant had been remembered and discussed. At least about Samael’s life. None of them present knew much about Hell and Lucifer wasn’t really talking about it either, though Linda did manage to get at least a little bit from him privately. Enough to know that he was remembering and that it was hitting him hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay see, Ella was supposed to be dead and in heaven and just left a note for Lucifer when he came back. I'm not entirely sure how this all happened.


	18. Chapter 18

“You haven’t asked about Maze at all,” Linda pointed out worriedly, during one of their pseudo-sessions. 

“I am quite sure that she’s on the run and wants nothing to do with me ever again, and I can’t exactly blame her,” Lucifer said emotionlessly. 

“You’re right about the first part, but not about the second. She just didn’t want to come back until she was sure that you were you again,” Linda told him. 

“After the way I treated her, she’s better off running,” Lucifer said, putting his head in his hands. 

“And yet she still loves you,” Linda told him. “That’s why she convinced you to come back to Earth so she could find a way to get you back. It just turned out that she didn’t need to do anything and it happened on it’s own.”

“And yet she’s still running,” Lucifer pointed out. 

“Because she wasn’t sure which you that you would be when this process was finished,” Linda told him. When she saw that she wasn’t getting through, she decided to try another way. “Either way, don’t you think she deserves to hear from you that you’re not after her so she can stop looking over her shoulder?” 

Lucifer sighed heavily. “You’re right. She should hear that, and an apology from me. I wouldn’t know how to contact her though.”

“I got her a mobile before she took off,” Linda told him, handing him a piece of paper with the code and giving his hand a squeeze as she walked out. 

Maze was currently hiking through the rain forest when her wrist beeped and she pressed the button and said, “Answer.” She stopped short when a hologram of Lucifer appeared and nearly stopped breathing. 

“Mazikeen,” Lucifer nodded at her. “I’m not going to ask where you are, but I wanted to ensure that you were aware that I will not be coming after you. You are safe to make whatever life you wish for yourself and if you need or want any assistance from me, all you need do is ask. It is the least I could do after how horribly I’ve treated you for so long.” 

“You’re…you again,” Maze said with relief. 

“Yes. I am. More or less,” Lucifer told her. 

Maze broke out in a grin. “I’m on my way home,” she told him. 

“You’re…coming back?” Lucifer asked incredulously. “After everything I’ve done to you?”

“Of course,” she told him. “I don’t want that creep back, but /my/ Lucifer I would still do anything for. It might take me a little while to get there though. I’m currently somewhere in the middle of the Amazon.” 

Lucifer closed his eyes against the wash of pain that she had gone to such lengths to disappear, but he nodded. “As long as you know that I will support you no matter where you wish to go.” 

“My place is by your side Lucifer. As always. Or at least in the same city,” she told him. “I’ll see you when I get back,” she said ending the call and looking around. Now if only she could find her way out of this damn jungle.

The next day, Lucifer finally agreed to let Michael and Gabriel visit, and they both showed up in time for lunch, Michael bringing his bubbly wife along. The three brothers stood there and stared at each other for a long moment and just as someone else was about to say something to break the ice, Michael did. “I’m so sorry brother. For everything that happened before and never seeking you out afterwards.” 

“Yeah. Me too,” Gabriel chimed in. “We should have stood by you, but we were cowards.” 

“Even now that the bad part is back?” Lucifer sneered. 

“There is no bad part, Sa-Lucifer,” Michael said. “There never was. You knew what you wanted and you went after it. There’s nothing wrong with that, no matter what Dad says.” 

“You don’t know the things I’ve done,” Lucifer scoffed. 

“No, we don’t,” Gabriel admitted. “I can’t begin to know how Hell has changed you, but it doesn’t matter. You’re still you. You’re still our brother. We should never have turned our backs on that.” 

Lucifer was torn as to what to do here. On one hand he remembered all those centuries alone after he was cast out, wishing that he had just one sibling on his side. Someone who cared. He also remembered them being there this time around though. Helping to raise him. He even remembered Gabriel singing that song for him at the wake. Not for Samael, for him. All he could say in the end was, “We’ll see.” 

Michael smiled sadly. “And that’s all we ask for, brother.” 

“Well now that all the drama is out of the way, what’s for lunch?” Ella asked to lighten the mood. 

Once they were all sitting around the table, Michael asked, “Since Lucifer is back now, does this mean we’ll be moving on sooner? I mean, if you want to get back to your old name and all?” 

It took Lucifer a moment to remember how they always moved to a new city for a decade or two every twenty years before coming back to LA and that Michael worked in the census office so that he could keep their identification scrubbed. It really was the only way to get by in the world these days. “I can remain Samael publicly for the next few years until the scheduled move. As long as the rest of you call me Lucifer, I will deal with it.” He wanted some time to reconnect with this city before they moved on. To merge his old life and his new. 

Everyone easily agreed, seeing how important this was to him if Lucifer was willing to remain Samael. He despised that name. Even the merging hadn’t changed that very much. The rest of the day was spent mostly with reminiscing about their time in heaven, neither Michael nor Gabriel wanting to bring up too much of their time with Samael this time around lest Lucifer rethink his giving them a chance with the thought that they didn’t want the rest of him. At least it went that way until dinner when Lucifer snapped. “Would you two quit walking on eggshells around the elephant in the room already?” 

Amenadiel looked ready to intervene if it came to blows, but Linda, Charlie, and Ella were holding back their laughter. Well, Linda and Charlie were. Ella couldn’t hold in the snickers at the gobsmacked look on her husband’s face. “What do you mean?” Gabriel asked trying for innocent. 

“You were there for the other part of me in a way that you never were when I was complete. I know that, you know that, so quit bloody pretending otherwise,” Lucifer said impatiently. 

“We weren’t trying to pretend, Lucifer,” Gabriel assured him. “We were just…”

“Trying not to rub it in,” Michael finished when Gabriel couldn’t. 

“I don’t know if I’d put it like that,” Gabriel said with a wince.

“Well you weren’t putting it like anything,” Michael shot back. “At least I tried.”

Lucifer’s barking laugh stopped the argument cold and they both looked at him, ignoring the laughter from the rest of the peanut gallery that had given up on preventing it. “As I was trying to say…we’re not going to solve anything if we can’t move forward, so stop dancing around the subject,” Lucifer told them amusedly. He had missed their frequent arguments at the same time he remembered them happening so recently. It was more than a little confusing, but he was almost getting used to that state of mind. 

After that dinner, everyone went home except for Charlie who had offered to stick around for a while and Lucifer accepted. He had his own room there after all anyway. For the first time in almost a month, Lucifer was almost alone and even ventured downstairs for some fun since he was feeling more like himself again. 

When Maze got back a week later, after spending five days just trying to find her way out of the jungle, she headed up to the penthouse and laughed when she found Lucifer buried under four other naked people. Lucifer creaked an eye open and Maze grinned. “Yep, you’re back.” 

“Maze! You made it!” Lucifer said happily, burrowing his way out of the pile of sleepy protests to grab her in a hug. Maze sank into it gratefully, being the final proof that all was well now. 

“You didn’t think some stupid jungle was going to stop me did you?” she laughed. “Now come on. Catch me up,” she said, turning and heading for the kitchen as Lucifer grabbed a robe to cover his nakedness. He may as well go ahead and start breakfast for the masses. If he remembered correctly, Charlie had a few guests of his own after all.


End file.
